


Darkly Dreaming Dean

by Duckyboos



Series: Chronicles Of A Serial Killer [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dexter, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Anal Sex, Bottom Castiel, Detective Dean Winchester, Established Relationship, Innocent Castiel, M/M, Murder, Serial Killer Dean, Top Dean, Writer Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:31:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckyboos/pseuds/Duckyboos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester has the perfect apple pie life with his shy-but-sweet boyfriend in the suburbs. He has a steady, well-paid job with the LAPD and he’s charming and attractive. </p><p>Really, he’s living the American Dream.</p><p>It’s his extra-curricular activities that some may disagree with, as he’s also an accomplished serial killer. </p><p>To date, his kills amount to around 36 and he’s never been caught. He’s employed by the law, remember? He knows how these things work.</p><p>*</p><p>A new serial killer arrives on the scene and despite the sloppiness of their work, Dean is intrigued by them and what they're trying to achieve, because their MO is the same as his; killing bad people.<br/>He makes it his mission to track the other killer down before the police do, and he’s left reeling when the 'Basin Vigilante' turns out to be someone a lot closer to home than he could have ever imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Meet Dean Winchester.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this has been buzzing around in my brain for a little while now.  
> I love Dexter and I really wanted to write a serial killer AU, so this just seemed to make sense. Update speeds will probably be a little slower than previous fics, just 'cause I really wanna get this one right.
> 
> A lot of the framework for the story is from Dexter, but the main plot and the over-arcing theme for the series (if you guys end up liking it enough) are from my own brain.
> 
>  
> 
> [ My Tumblr ](http://not-a-natural-born-idjit.tumblr.com/)

It is unequivocally too fuckin’ hot. He can barely think, it’s that damned blistering; the sweat is pouring down his back making his work shirt stick to his skin and it’s about a thousand shades of uncomfortable. Though, speaking of shade…

“Anything, Dean?” His big brother – who is technically his little brother, being four years younger – peers over him to get a good look at the body. He usually hates people leaning over his shoulder, but at the moment he’s willing to let it slide because his brother’s oversized frame is at least giving him some respite from the sun.

“Well,” Dean points a gloved finger at the little droplets of blood fanning away from the corpse near the left shoulder. “See this pattern here, Sammy?”

He catches Sam’s nod in his periphery.

“If you look at how the drops seem to elongate the further they get away from the body, what do you think that tells us?”

“Um,” Sam falters and Dean can tell that he’s squinting behind his Ray Bans. “That he was shot before he was stabbed?”

“No. It tells us that the stabbing was personal.” Dean makes an underarm slashing motion with a flick of his wrist, from left to right. “See, the way the blood has splattered suggests that it was a passionate kill. He’s been slashed rather than stabbed. People don’t do that in random killings.”

“Then he was shot?”

Dean plants his hands on his knees and pushes himself up until he’s standing. He ignores the way his bones seem to protest at the movement, because the sun is on him in full force again and he needs to get a drink before he spontaneously combusts. He drops his sunglasses back down onto his nose and turns to face his brother.

“Then he was shot Sammy.”

 

***

 

“Babe?”

Nothing. The house seems to be empty, so Dean throws his keys into the ugly glass fruit bowl on the sideboard and closes the front door.

“Dean?”

Not so empty after all.

His boyfriend, Cas, appears from the kitchen looking a little red-faced and flustered. His black button-down shirt that Dean got him for his last birthday is askew and his usually wild hair, is well, still wild. His blue eyes are alert though, darting over Dean’s face and body, as if he’s checking for something; injuries most likely.

“I’m fine Cas.”

“You weren’t due home until seven?”

“Yeah, I handed the paperwork in on the Mendez case a couple of days early so Harvelle told me to take the rest of the day off. Apparently I work too hard.”

“Well, I agree with her there.” Cas seems to finally remember himself and makes a beeline for Dean, throwing his arms around his neck and pressing a neat kiss to his lips. Dean slides his arms around the smaller man’s trim waist and kisses back, but they keep it strictly PG-13. Just like Dean always tries to until it’s strictly necessary.

In the two years they’ve been together, Dean has managed to keep their sexual encounters to an absolute minimum. It’s not because he doesn’t find Cas attractive; because there’s no denying that he’s nice to look at, with his dark tousled hair, lithe muscles, and stunning blue eyes, but Dean just hates being that close to – that intimate with – another human being.

He has too many secrets for it to be possible.

Sex is the one place he can’t hide from Cas. He found that out the first time they ever slept together. So now, even though he knows it hurts Cas, they don’t often have sex, and when they do, it’s always Dean fucking him from behind.

He knows that he’s a bad person. He’s had a lifetime of being told that by his now-deceased father, but he can’t bring himself to let Cas go. There’s something about him that keeps Dean tethered, and as selfish as it is, Dean can’t bear the thought of being without him.

Castiel Novak is a good man; too good for Dean. He deserves the perfect life.

Dean is just going through the motions of providing him with a perfect life, because his drive to kill is unwavering, resolute and all-consuming.

Dean Winchester, with his white-picket fence, wonderful boyfriend and steady job for the LAPD is a serial killer.

 


	2. Chapter One - Wear a polyester suit, act happy, look cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the fantastic amount of support for less than 800 words. You guys are freakin' awesome.

 “The City Of Angels my ass.” Dean’s colleague and frequent partner, Detective Lafitte, mutters as he stares intently at the crime scene photos from the day previously, apparently hoping for some kind of explanation to jump out at him from the glossy prints. The sun is weaker today; instead a sickly, heavy humidity – which is thankfully rare in L.A. –has taken its place. Mercifully, the AC is working in full force at the moment, but it’s only a matter of time before it breaks down again and the whole building – from the evidence room up to the homicide division and everyone in between – gets plunged into what feels like the inside of a volcano.

Dean doesn’t look up from his position hunched over the manila folder open on his neatly-kept desk, eyes carefully scanning of the pages with much more interest than he usually gives to the dead. It isn’t that he doesn’t care, it’s that they’re already gone; nothing can be done for them now. Sympathy won’t do jack shit.

This ‘victim’, Peter Elkes, isn’t so much a poor unfortunate, if his rap sheet is anything to go by; sexual assault and murder among the highlights of the bastard’s rather long and considerable career. He’d been released from prison about six months ago after pleading diminished capacity and serving a grand total of sixteen years for killing an 18-year-old-girl.

He had the makings of someone Dean himself would have considered taking on.

“Yeah,” Dean mutters distractedly, ”not looking so angelic right about now.” In fact, his work has proven too often that Los Angeles is the furthest thing away from Heaven; the undercurrent of the place more of a stygian abyss, swallowing souls of beautiful young people pursuing their dreams, to feed the machine of Hollywood. Los Angeles is a mirage that presents itself as sparkle and glitz and glamour, but the underbelly, the homelessness, the drugs, the murders… well it’s the reality that isn’t really explored by the Academy Awards coverage.

Not that most places are any different.

Same shit, just different accents.

“Any theories Dean?”

He finally tears his eyes away from the paragraph that he’s read at least six times by now and stares blandly over at Benny and the man who has joined him, perching himself on the edge of Benny’s desk.

“Yeah, you’re usually first out of the gate with this bullshit.” Sergeant Henriksen adds, shooting Dean a suspicious look that is so the norm by now, Dean would be worried if the dark scowl wasn’t permanently on the man’s face, “It’s like you have some kind of psychic link to all the sickos and whack jobs in L.A.”

“Just hunches.” Dean amends, flashing his warmest smile in Victor’s direction, for which he gets a deeper glower in return. Winding the man up has become the only real pleasure in his otherwise mundane life; it’s harmless enough and Dean finds it amusing that in a building full of cops, Henriksen is the only one who gets an odd vibe from him.

If TV shows were to be believed, a cop’s intuition is second to none. But then again, if TV shows were to be believed, most crimes are solved within days and wrapped up nice and neatly. In Dean’s experience, it rarely goes down like that.

Not that he’s complaining though, quite the opposite; he actually likes Benny and a lot of the other men and women he works with. He’d definitely miss their company if they turned their backs on him.

“Hunches,” Henriksen repeats with a disbelieving snort. “Sure thing.” He pushes off the desk and glares at Dean as he strides out of the bullpen with a walk that the one of the lab guys – Ed – had reliably informed him meant that the Sergeant hasn’t been laid in a while. He’s not quite sure how they can tell, but he’s not especially keen to find out, so generally when either Ed or Harry starts talking, Dean stops listening. It’s a technique that has saved him from many an unpleasant tale.

Benny watches him go and then turns back to Dean, his blue eyes kind and earnest. In fact, Benny’s sincerity is what ranks him above most of the cops that Dean’s worked with over the past nine years; people seem to instinctively trust him and it’s something he strives to emulate, wanting to come across as more empathetic and normal. “You know he’s just jealous of your solve rate, right? He doesn’t know how to handle you, brother.”

Dean shrugs like it doesn’t bother him, which it actually doesn’t. There’s very little that the disproportionately angry stereotype of a cop could do that would get to Dean, short of catching him in the act of murder.

That would be pretty inconvenient.

“But seriously,” Benny drags his chair closer and sits down to Dean’s right, shoulders mere inches away from touching. Dean tries not to flinch away. “Any ideas brother?  ‘Cause this doesn’t look like a gang killing or anything like that.”

“Well, it’s definitely personal.” Dean takes the photos out of Benny’s hands and flips through them until he finds the one he wants. “See this here?” he points to the knife wound near the left carotid artery. “Now, see, a lot of people would look at that and think that he was aiming for the artery, but missed. I don’t think so. Most of these lacerations show a decent amount of skill, so I think the killer wanted the victim to feel the pain rather than bleed out relatively quickly as he obviously would if a main vein was cut.”

Benny nods thoughtfully, his gaze flicking between Dean and the photos. “Okay, so why shoot the guy afterwards?”

Dean gestures to the folder still on his desk. “From what I’ve seen of the Elkes’s file, it’s a method he used to adopt. Cut up the vic and then shoot them. He did it to a woman in ’83 and again in ’97.”

The bastard kept getting off with the insanity plea.

“Hmm. That information would have been in the papers though. So that doesn’t narrow it down at all.”

“Nope.” Dean shrugs apologetically, though really, he’s not sorry at all. He hopes they never catch who did it; as far as he’s concerned they did a charitable public service like helping out at a soup kitchen or the local animal shelter.

Benny exhales a heavy, frustrated breath. “City of fuckin’ Angels.”

 

 

***

The pot-bellied, greying man sitting in an idling red Honda Accord across the street from where Dean is parked, is a pedophile. Dean knows this because he has read George Harvey’s file. He did five years for the rape of a six year old boy, who killed himself shortly before his eleventh birthday, and more importantly – a few weeks before Harvey’s release.

The kid apparently knew that the bastard getting put away for five not-nearly-long-enough years would only make the desire worse. Which officially makes – _made_ – him smarter than the judge that made the ridiculous ruling.

He’s next on Dean’s to-do list. Harvey, not the judge. Although, it may be worth considering if he makes a habit of handing down bullshit sentences.

At the moment, Harvey is taking photos of a young blond mother and her little boy, who probably isn’t older than six or seven.

Clearly, old habits are hard to break for George Harvey. The sick bastard will have to be shown the error of his ways, being as the justice system is self-evidently far from capable.

His phone rings loudly on the passenger seat, and he makes a grab for it, answering without checking the caller ID first.

“Winchester.”

A loud sigh, then Cas’s tired, strained sounding voice. ”Did you forget about dinner with your brother and Jess again?”

 _Fuck._ “Fuck.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Another long-suffering sigh. "How could you fail to remember _again_ Dean? Sam said that he even came up from Vice to remind you earlier today."

Was that today? Shit. “Look Cas, I’ll be there as soon as I can, promise. In fact, I’m leaving right now.”

“Yeah, alright.” Dean can tell by the tone of his voice that it is far from alright, but Dean isn’t about to look a gift-horse in the mouth. A reprieve is a reprieve.

“Cas?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” And he does. Well, it’s the closest incarnation to love that he allows himself to get anyway. He’s not a sociopath; he understands feelings, knows love. He just chooses not to give himself over to emotions that freely. Sam has put up with it for so long that he’s just accepted it as part of Dean, but Castiel still struggles with it from time to time.

There’s a brief pause, then, “Yeah, I love you too.” He sounds resigned though. Like he does love Dean and he’s accepted it like a punishment.

Dean isn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

***

Three faces with varying expressions look up at him from the oblong dining table when he enters his and Cas’s shared house in Mar Vista. Dean likes it here; it’s closer to the sea – and work – than their old place in Brentwood. Sam looks vaguely amused, but that’s kind of his default where Dean’s concerned; Jess – Sammy’s lovely fiancée – looks a little concerned; and Castiel, well Cas just looks pissed.

“So glad you could join us Dean,” Sam grins, “Hope we didn’t pull you from anything important.”

 _No, not really. Just some pedophile that has gotta go._ He’ll start making plans later

“Nope.” He pulls out a chair and sits down between Sam and Jess, Cas glaring at him from his seat directly opposite. “Smells good, Cas.”

“It should. I spent most of the day cooking it.”

The conversation between them is awkward and stilted, but his brother and Jess barely seem to notice; far too busy with their wedding plans.

“And oh, Cas, you should see the dress – “

Dean allows his mind to wander. They put his detachment in situations like this down to him being a ‘typical Y chromosome cliché’ (Jess’s words on their second meeting) and Dean is absolutely fine with purporting that image if it keeps them away from the truth. He’d much rather be seen as a dumbass thoughtless man than what he actually is.

Castiel is listening intently to what Jess is saying as he chews his salad with his mouth closed, all sweetness and light and so effortlessly _good_ , like _seeping out of his pores virtuous_ , that Dean is almost jealous with how naturally it comes to his boyfriend.

Dean’s problem with his cover has always been that he knows he’s supposed to be someone else.

He actually hates the classical music that he has on in the car – preferring the hard rock and metal that his dad used to play when he was a kid; he loathes plain salads – much more interested in a decent burger or hot-dog; he detests wearing monkey suits – infinitely happier wearing scruffy jeans and a t-shirt, but he knows how important it is to blend in and part of that is apparently just _existing_ by being as boring and bland as humanly possible.

Being the grey man is a survival technique practiced by the military for good reason after all, and it’s served him well over the past 29 years, helping him to go unnoticed and slip under a lot of people’s radars.

That knowledge doesn't stop him from feeling like Patrick Bateman – the watered down, domesticated version.

He wonders if the person who killed Elkes is sitting at home with an oblivious family, eating freshly baked whole-wheat bread and salad, and talking about weddings.

For their sake, Dean hopes not.

His brother turns to him, evidently bored of Jess and Cas’s conversation, now that it has descended into talk about flowers and their arrangements, “what are we doing for my bachelor party?”

Shit. Dean hasn’t really thought about it. The wedding is what, five weeks away? Plenty of time to work something out.

Sam takes Dean’s silence for what it is; an admission of guilt. He sighs heavily, like being his brother is a major chore. Which is probably is. “The wedding is only three weeks away, Dean. You’re my best man. Get it sorted out.”

Double shit. “Yeahuh. I’m on it.” What do ordinary people usually do at bachelor parties? Drool over strippers and drink too much alcohol? It’s not like he can arrange a kill-a-murderous-asshole bash, no matter how awesome it would be.

“No strippers,” Jess pats the back of Dean's hand, smiling at him playfully, “I know what you’re thinking.”

Usually, when people say that, they’re totally off the mark. At least this time, she’s only partly wrong. He’s not going to correct her on the second bit.

Huh. So maybe strippers really are the customary thing. He’ll drop it casually into conversation with Benny tomorrow.

 

***

Cas is sitting in Dean’s lap, head tilted back against Dean’s shoulder as they lounge on the couch together, enjoying the peace and quiet now that Sammy and Jess have gone home. It’s surprisingly comfortable. Or at least Dean doesn’t feel _un_ comfortable. The news is on and the anchor switches from a story about a grandmother of five beating a mugger with her handbag, to the one about the body of murderer Peter Elkes found near the Los Angeles Basin. He absent-mindedly strokes his fingers across the skin of Cas’s forearm and almost instantly, he feels his boyfriend tense, whole body going rigid against him.

“You okay?” Dean asks softly, sure that Cas is about to tell him off for his late appearance at dinner earlier this evening. He’s never been one for huge scenes, instead preferring to sulk until he can get Dean alone and chastise him in private.

“Yeah.” Cas breathes. “That’s nice, don’t stop that.”

Dean complies after a surprised beat, tracing circles on the pale skin and Cas melts back into him, pliant and warm. “You should go outside more,” he says, “You never know, you might actually tan.”

Cas huffs out a small laugh, but he doesn’t reply and they watch the rest of the broadcast in companionable silence until he asks, “what cases are you working on at the moment?”

“Just the Basin one.”

“Oh?” Castiel, shuffles around in Dean’s lap, turning sideways to face him, looking more than a little eager. It’s not unusual; though for someone who claims to be a pacifist, Cas certainly takes an interest in Dean’s job. “Are you getting anywhere with it?”

“The man was a scumbag,” Dean offers with a small shrug, “got what was coming to him. I don’t think anyone in the precinct is putting it at the top of their priority pile.”

Castiel stiffens again, his eyes skimming across Dean’s face, checking for truthfulness. At least this is one topic that he doesn’t need the sincerity lessons learned from Benny. “Do you really believe that?”

“He was a rapist and a murderer, Cas.”

“He should have been in jail then.”

Dean barely refrains from rolling his eyes; they've had this conversation a fair amount of times over the course of their relationship. Neither of them ever budges from their respective stances. “Yes, because jails are so effective.” The rate of recidivism for males alone in the US is a steady 53%. How it can be considered a decent long-term solution, when over half of the current prison population are bound to re-offend, Dean has no idea.

Elkes himself was proof of the systems failings.

“It really is that black and white for you, isn’t it?”

_Oh sweet, innocent Cas, if only you knew._

“Yes.” He replies with complete honesty. Perhaps the most honest he’s been with his boyfriend in a long time. “I’ve seen a lot of bad shit. One less evil son of a bitch on the streets is fine by me, no matter how it happens.” He doesn’t apply the same logic to himself. He kills monsters. He saves people.

“Unbelievable.” Cas mutters, shaking his head.

“Look, I know that you always want to see the best in everybody. As far as you’re concerned, everyone deserves a fair chance to prove themselves to be anything other than the decent human being you automatically assume that they are. I mean, that’s gotta be the reason you’re with me, right?” The words are out and Dean can’t take them back. He sees the hurt flitter across Cas’s face and he reaches for him, but his boyfriend is already up and out of range, standing with his arms folded across his chest a few feet away.

He looks so wounded and dejected that Dean instinctively makes to stand up to comfort him, but Castiel flinches and takes another step back.

Silence falls over them both.

Dean knows he’s let something slip that he shouldn’t. He prides himself on being an exceptional liar, but there’s no doubt that around Cas he lets his guard down for some reason that he has yet to fathom out. It’s why they can never be intimate. The first time they had sex, Castiel had seen something in Dean – something primal – that went far beyond the boundaries of heat-of-the-moment passion.

Dean knew, because he saw himself reflected in Cas’s eyes. He was laying himself bare in front of another person, allowing them to see what he was and it should have scared Castiel into running for the hills. But he didn’t, and it’s a mystery that Dean still hasn’t solved. It plagues him. More than it probably should, because he’s a fucking detective. He should be able to figure it out.

“You think that? You think that I’m only with you because I’m naïve?” Castiel asks softly, eyes all liquid and Dean actually almost feels guilty.

“No, I don’t think that.”

_Well, maybe sometimes._

“I just…” He tugs a hand through his hair. “You’re a good, kind-hearted person, Cas. You’re naturally positive. And it’s really endearing. There are a lot of people out there who would – who have – taken advantage of your nice nature.”

Cas has nebulously mentioned an ex that it ‘didn’t end well’ with. Dean doesn’t need to imagine what he means by that. He’s broken. He needs someone to put him back together. Someone who knows _how_. Which isn’t Dean.

In some bizarre way, Castiel is as damaged as Dean, but the difference is that with the right help, Cas _can_ be fixed; he still has hope. Dean has done too many bad things to ever be saved.

Not that he wants to be.

His cell vibrates between them on the glass coffee table that has a huge curved scratch on it from the time Sam forgot to use a coaster. It would probably bother a normal person, though Dean couldn’t care less; it’s a fucking table. He reaches for the phone, eyes scanning over the text message. It’s from Benny saying that he has pertinent information in the Basin case.

“I’ve got to get down to the station.” He tells Cas as he types out his reply.

“Of course you do.” It’s spoken in an exasperated tone, and when Dean finally looks up, Cas is standing there, arms still folded defensively across his chest, looking resigned, but his features are softer now and Dean just stares for a moment, eyes greedily drinking in his boyfriend’s strong, stubbled jaw, plump chapped lips and his remarkable cerulean eyes.

For the millionth time in the last couple of years, Dean  wishes that he had the strength to walk away from the man. In the beginning, it had been the case; although he was intrigued by him, he was free to leave at any time. He was capable of it.

Now, he’s not so sure anymore.

“Go,” Cas says, waving a hand dismissively, pointedly keeping his eyes off Dean; as if looking at him would somehow make him change from being okay with it, to not. He sighs. “Go save lives you damn hero.” His voice is fond now and there’s a pink flush coloring his cheeks when he notices Dean’s staring and he drops his eyelashes demurely.

Cas is so fucking good. So _pure_ in comparison to Dean.

At least there’s _one_ angel in this city.


	3. Chapter Two - Death be not proud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, I am so sorry that I have taken so long to upload the next chapter!   
> Any way, I hope that it's worth the wait, and thank you all once again for the wonderful comments and stuff.

Benny practically jumps on him the second the elevator doors ping open, shoving Elkes’s file into his hands, as if Dean hasn’t read the damn thing a million times over. He steps out of the way, allowing others to crowd into the small space he’s vacated and follows Benny into the bullpen.

A handcuffed female with gravity-defying breasts too large to be anything other than silicone, winks at Dean as he approaches. He dredges up a forged smile and then promptly forgets all about her, strolling past without a second glance.

In a lot of ways, L.A. is completely perfect for him; the empty platitudes, fake veneer, false advertising, all belying the soulless, murky undercurrent – It’s a complete emulation of himself. Which may be why he’s stayed here longer than anywhere else. Nothing in this city has any tangible depth. Questioning suspects and witnesses usually passes by in a whirl of designer pinstripe suits, artificial tan and one-sided flirting; dealing with members of the public and the press is easy enough if you know how and when to say the right things.

The best part about Los Angeles is that nobody really expects anything of anybody, other than vacant reciprocation. It’s easy to mimic and fit in.

Which is why when something extraordinary happens, Dean can’t help but take notice.

“What is it Benny?” Dean’s too tired for the guessing game that the other detective clearly wants him to play.

“Look.” Benny points at the mountain of folders open haphazardly all over his desk, overspilling onto the floor. If Lieutenant Harvelle sees, she’s going to shit bricks. The woman is real stickler for neat and tidiness. Benny… well Benny just isn’t. The amount of burger wrappers he’s left in Dean’s car over the past few years can attest to that; the numbers have to be up in the high hundreds.

“Yeah, it’s a load of jackets that you’ve pulled out of archives. Wanna stop with the cryptic bullshit Benny?” The annoyance in his voice is new. He can tell by the look on his friend’s face that he wasn’t expecting it. Dean is known for his even-temper and placidity, but he hates giving up his time with Cas for anything other than a kill. It seems like a waste. “Sorry,” He scrubs the hand not holding Elkes’s file over his face and looks up into those sincere, concerned eyes and repeats his apology.

Benny nods and flashes a kind smile, dipping down to pick the files up off the threadbare navy carpet tiles. “S’okay man. We all have our bad days.” Not Dean, he’s not _allowed_. “Well, err, these cases – there’s five in all-” He straightens up, dropping the folders onto his desk and takes a deep dramatic breath. “I think they may be linked to our Basin guy.”

Dean stares at Benny incredulously, still not fully understanding. “Okay,” He grabs the nearest chair tugging it towards him and sitting down, elbows on his knees, eyes connected with Benny’s. “Explain it to me.”

The other man take a seat, turning from Dean to the files, a flicker of excitement crossing his features at the idea of having Dean’s undivided attention. Benny has a lot of theories, most of which never come to anything and so, Dean – maybe a little unkindly – doesn’t really humor him like he used to when they were first partnered. Unless there’s a very real possibility that he may be on to something. Like now. “I went through some of the unsolveds of the last year, you know, just to see if anything jumped out at me, so I cross-referenced the victims of the cases with the criminal database to find out just how many of them had records. ‘Course I ruled out any of them who only had misdemeanors, y’know. I’m talking the big three.”

The 'big three' being murder, pedophilia and rape. The same three crimes that Dean counts as punishable by death.

Benny is doing a piss-poor job of concealing his excitement, but Dean actually gets it. The fulfillment Benny’s feeling right now is probably similar to how Dean feels when he puts a murdering scumbag down. He sees it more as euthanasia in reality. They’re sick; no use to society. It’s best to cut them from the herd.

He’s a one-man pest control service.

It’s killing to serve a purpose, otherwise it’s just murder and that would make him no better than the animals that he removes for the greater good of civilization. His dad had always said that comparing killing a person to putting down a dog cheapens all human life, but Dean is pretty sure that an individual who uses sex as a weapon or who tortures people doesn’t really respect the sanctity of life and so, shouldn’t have the same courtesy shown to them.

Apparently, someone else feels the same.

It seems like he’s found a comrade.

Dean clears his throat, trying not to get ahead of himself by imagining some kind of vigilante team-up, complete with masks and spandex. “So you think it’s the same guy?”

Benny nods. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay then. Show me everything you have.”

Almost two hours and a ridiculous amount of reading later, Dean is completely convinced that Benny is right. It would be a challenge to prove; the MO’s are different, changing to suit the murderer that the vigilante is culling. Though, the proximity to the Basin each time is pretty compelling.

“Should we go to Harvelle with this? It’s kinda big.”

Dean’s known Lieutenant Harvelle since he was a teenager, along with Captain Singer and he’s well aware that they trust him and his instincts implicitly, so if he explained Benny’s theory to them, they would undoubtedly let Dean and Benny partner up and go for it.

The thing is, Dean doesn’t really want that.

Already, he feels some kind of weird bond with the vigilante; they’re fighting for the same side, just under slightly different banners and so it wouldn’t be right to send the police charging in after them. He’d actually be interested in speaking to someone who could easily be considered a friend; a genuine one that Dean wouldn’t have to hide his true self from.

He could finally emerge from his protective cocoon of insipid docility and actually be _himself_.

They could just drive around the country killing any deserving fucker they came across, eat as many burgers as either of them could stomach and listen to AC/DC and Metallica.

It’s a pipedream and deep down he knows it, but it’s still a nice thought.

“No.” Dean replies eventually. “It’s too much of a risk for her to consider at this stage. I think we should do some more research.” And by ‘we’ he means himself.

Benny sighs, looking down at the open files. “You’re probably right, brother. No sense in bringing this to the table until we’re sure.”

Dean nods, overwhelmingly glad that his friend is content to leave it there.

Benny looks disappointed, but it’s for the best and Dean stands to leave, dropping a hand to the detective’s shoulder and squeezing lightly.

“I’m gonna get my ass home before Cas goes to bed. You should get home to Andrea too.”

“Sure.” Benny replies in a way that suggests his has no intentions of doing any such thing; not any time soon anyway. Which is the exact answer that Dean anticipated. Benny is a good cop; he won't be happy until he's got a perp behind bars.

Dean offers a small conciliatory smile, before he’s off, striding back towards the elevators and as the doors slide shut, his grin widens, a realization dawning.

Cas thinks he’s at the station. The guys at the station think he’s at home.

It’s not exactly planned in his usual semi-meticulous way but Dean’s not one for wasting opportunities when they present themselves so beautifully.

_George Harvey, your time is up._

 

***

Considering that Dean’s success rate is at 100%, he isn’t especially careful with how he dispatches people.

When he first started this with his dad’s persuasion at the tender age of fourteen, he’d been unsure of how to dispose of the bodies. Even back then, he’d known that killing the evil motherfuckers in their own homes just wasn’t a good idea. Too many things could go wrong; too much evidence left behind.

Equally, dumping them in one of the bays here wasn’t much of an option either; they were popular tourist spots. And whilst he may be a bad man, he’s not an asshole who wants to ruin someone’s holiday.

So really, it doesn’t leave him with a lot of options.

After years of messing with the formula, under his father’s watchful – and disgusted – eye, he finally happened upon a method that works the best for him.

The first stage is to do his homework. Well, in this instance, he’s already handed it in and got an 'A'. He knows that George Harvey is guilty; that had been proven beyond all reasonable doubt in court and after his quick foray into field research, Dean is content to believe that the justice system hadn’t got that part wrong.

The second part is to get into the target’s house/apartment, which isn’t always the challenge he imagines that it’s going to be. Sometimes it’s as simple as breaking in to their homes and lying in wait, other times he has to pretend to be some kind of delivery guy with a parcel for the neighbour and _sometimes_ – thanks to his target’s proclivities – he uses his looks and the illusion of a broken-down car to gain access.

Next, he gets them unconscious. Garroting is a favorite method; generally with wire. And then he grabs a few of their personal items; shirts, a couple of photos, passport etc and stuff them into a suitcase or hold-all. Just enough to make it look like they have left town in a hurry. Generally it’s all for naught. Most of the bastards that Dean kills have nobody who would miss them.

The fourth stage is the one he’s currently at with Harvey in the trunk of the stolen sedan. He uses an old junker because they don’t have those safety release catches in the trunk. More often than not, his victims stay unconscious right up until Dean kills them – he isn’t sadistic; he doesn’t have any real desire to watch the light go out behind their eyes or anything quite as psychotic as that. He just wants the job done, so he can get home – but he’d learned the hard way eleven years previously, when instead of going to the prom, he’d opted to make his sixth kill. The guy had woken up and the car that Dean had hotwired was a fairly modern one with a safety catch. He’d escaped.

Luckily, Dean was quicker and smarter, and after a chase that concluded with one of his favorite shirts getting ruined, the man had ended up the same way that Harvey is about to; except this time, instead of the Black Hills, Dean is heading towards the Santa Monica Mountains.

The mountains are beautiful and the smell of pine and earth is so deeply ingrained into his sense memory by now that his blood heats in his veins before he’s even halfway to one of the many secluded spots that he uses. He parks up, cuts the engine, but leaves the headlights on; it’s easily got to be one am by now and so far away from any official trails, the entire clearing is pitch black.

The sound of the driver’s side door squeaking when he shoves it open is loud in the relative tranquility of the night, as is the sound of snapping twigs and leaves rustling underfoot as he makes his way to the rear of the car.

He frequently gets asked if he works out. Usually by women whilst they squeeze his bicep and make approving sounds and bat their fake eyelashes. He makes a point of answering truthfully, just because it’s always mistaken for flirting.

The honest answer is that he doesn’t work out. His arms are toned muscle because of all the lifting unconscious – often fat – bodies in and out of the trunks of cars.

Of course, the women laugh at – what they assume to be – dry wit, believing him to be charming and funny, and Dean can enjoy his own private joke, secure in the knowledge that his words will never be taken at face value.

Right now though, the joke is on him because George Harvey is _not_ a small man by any stretch of the imagination and lifting a dead weight of what’s gotta be at least 250 pounds is not an easy task. He really should invest in some kind of pulley system.

He unceremoniously drops the man’s unconscious form in the center of the clearing, around five feet away from the rear of the car, and straightens up as he wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, it coming away slick with sweat. He’s thankful for the change of clothes in a duffel on the back seat. It wouldn’t feel right going home to Cas in clothes that he’s killed in.

He grabs the shovel from the sedan’s back seat and begins his least favorite task.

It’s about half an hour later – when he’s a good two-thirds of the way through digging the shallow grave – that the bastard finally comes around with a dazed, garbled sound.

Dean slams the blade of shovel into the earth, satisfied when the tool stands by itself and turns to face Harvey, observing silently as the man’s pudgy face runs the gamut of expected emotions as he takes in his surroundings. After a few moments, he settles on terror and finally looks at Dean, fear making his eyes wide.

“W-who the fuck are you?” It takes a couple of attempts for him to get the sentence out, but Dean just waits patiently, standing at parade rest; back straight, feet a shoulder’s breadth apart and hands locked in the small of his back. It’s a stance his father had him maintain for hours when he was training.

He knows that combined with his height, muscular build and detachment it also serves well as an intimidation technique.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Are you-“ His eyes dance nervously between the grave and Dean, any small amount of bravado disappearing in the face of Dean’s unwavering, uncompromising presence. “-Are you going to kill me?”

“I didn’t bring you up here for a romantic picnic.”

Even in such poor lighting, Dean can see the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows hard.

“I could just run.”

“You could.” Dean agrees, deftly reaching for the gun in his holster. He pulls it out with an ease born of practice and points it at Harvey, a smug smile playing on his lips. “You’d just die tired though.”

The man baulks, gray eyes looking black for a second in the glare of the headlights.

“Up.” Dean orders, stepping closer to Harvey, expanding on the instruction by motioning with the gun. Slowly, the man clambers to his feet, using the tree behind to keep himself steady, eyes never leaving Dean’s face.

“Time for you to put some work in.” He gestures to the shovel nonchalantly.

“You’re going to make me dig my own grave?” Harvey’s voice holds a small note of incredulity, despite the situation and he sluggishly stumbles the few feet towards the open grave, Dean’s gun still trained on him.

Dean hands him the tool and flashes a smile, all malice and no warmth. “’There are two kinds of people: Those with loaded guns and those who dig.’ And since I’m the one with the gun…”

“I’m the one who digs.”

Dean shrugs, candid with his response. “Clichéd, I know. But I have had a _long-ass_ day.”

There’s silence for a few moments as Harvey finally begins heaping more dirt on the pile.

 “Why are you doing this to me?”

Dean cocks his head like Cas does when he doesn’t understand. It almost certainly doesn’t look as adorable and innocent on him as it does his honorable boyfriend. “Are you being facetious or do you really not know?”

“I-I really don’t know.” The man stutters and Dean cannot see one ounce of regret hidden behind his gray eyes; just fear for his own life. If his abhorrence quota wasn’t already filled with just the mere thought of having to breathe the same air as him, Dean would be disgusted by the reaction.

He taps the barrel of his firearm to his temple. “Think real hard. Though the fact that you’re professing not to know, just reinforces my need to do this.”

He can almost hear Harvey’s mind ticking over as he quickly spools through the depraved shit he’s done, searching for something bad enough to warrant standing in the mountains digging his own grave. “The kid?”

Dean can’t keep the disdain from creeping along the edge of his voice, jagged and sharp like broken glass. “’The kid?’ The fucking _kid?_ His _name_ was Matthew Allen. And you’re responsible for his death.”

“What?” Harvey’s eyes widen and he stops digging momentarily until Dean cocks the gun. “I didn’t kill anybody, man.”

“Yes you did. The second you laid your filthy fucking hands on him.”

The grave is looking deep enough now. Maybe two or three feet.

“Anything to say for yourself?” Dean asks, yanking the shovel out of Harvey’s meaty hands. He’s willing to allow him some final words which is far more generous than the scumbag deserves.

“You’re really going to kill me?”

Not great words to shuffle off the mortal coil with, but he’s heard worse. Commonly it’s sniveling pleas for mercy which just make Dean wish he actually was a psychopath into torture just so that he could make them experience a fucking modicum of the fear they made their victims suffer, and realize the cruel irony.

“Yep.” Then Dean pulls the trigger, the gun lets out a quick metallic clack due to the suppressor (another hard lesson learned), and the body falls into the hole.

Dean turns away and grabs a small gas can and the suitcase of Harvey’s stuff from the back seat of the car and returns to the dead man. He upturns the case, letting the keepsakes and clothes tumble out, before squatting to grab one of the garish Hawaiian shirts. He straightens up, pouring gasoline allover Harvey’s corpse, making sure to douse the bastard thoroughly. He flicks open a zippo, lighting it on the first attempt – briefly wishing that he had somebody to show off to, ‘cause that was pretty impressive – igniting the fabric of the shirt and throws it onto the dead guys’ chest, watching as the flames rapidly begin to engulf the body.

The fire easily burns through the material of the clothes, crackling and popping as it consumes possessions that were once important to an individual who may once have been a person.

He throws the half-empty jerry can into the trunk and then takes a seat on the hood of the shitty car, feet on the bumper, keeping an eye on the black greasy smoke curling above the leaping blaze. It takes a few moments where his mind is completely blank before he realizes that he’s just staring at pretty colors like a fascinated toddler and he mentally shakes himself. It’s more than a little obvious as to what’s causing the malfunction.

The vigilante.

His mind whirs with the possibilities that this virtual stranger presents.

What could their reasons be for doing what they’re doing? Are they the same as Dean’s? Do they _need_ to kill to attempt to regain something they lost like Dean?

There are never any signs of torture on the corpses, so he _or she_ doesn’t enjoy killing. However, the bodies are always dumped, rather than destroyed or hidden, suggesting a desire to be recognized for their hard work.

Personally, Dean is perfectly happy not being acknowledged for his dedication to the cause. Any craving for credit or appreciation is far outweighed by the desire to not get caught.

Alternatively, they could just be sloppy and don’t know the best way to dispose of a body.

They clearly have some excellent working knowledge of the body though; knowing exactly where to cut to prolong death. Does that not count as torture, erasing Dean’s previous theory? Or do they take the final moments of the victim’s life to tell them exactly why they’re being punished, confirming the other notion?

The inconsistencies are giving Dean a headache.

Usually he finds solace in eradicating a deserving asshole, but tonight, he’s even more restless than he was a couple of years ago when he first met Cas and went months without killing.

It’s a miracle that Cas persevered with him, because by all accounts (his brother and Benny) he was pretty unbearable the whole time.

When the body that used to be George Harvey is nothing but dried out bones and smoldering ash, he begins shoveling the dirt back into the grave until the sun is peeking over the horizon, warming his back as he works and Dean heaves a sigh, feeling a slight twinge of guilt that Cas will have to wake up on his own again.


	4. Chapter Three - The Spider and the Fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, apologies for the lateness of this; real life has caught up with me in the form of lots of bad things happening in quick succession. Funerals, money/business issues, it's all going on here!  
> Those of you who are still waiting on the epilogue of 'Lock, Stock...' will probably be relieved to know that I'm planning on finishing and posting it within the next couple of days.
> 
> Apologies yet again guys, and thank you for your continued support.
> 
> Also, I just really wanted to get this chapter posted, so I'm not 100% happy with it right now. There may be small changes made to it in the morning.

John Winchester had once told his eldest son that there was a difference between those who feel safest in the light and those who feel safest in the dark. Literally and metaphorically Dean has always felt more comfortable in the shadows; even now, watching friends, colleagues and family, smiling and chattering brightly in the evening sun, Dean is standing by himself in the shade of the house, just observing, on the fringe.

Cas, however – who appears in his field of vision, padding barefoot across the warm stone slabs of their patio, smiling genuinely at the group of people assembled by the grill where Captain Singer is busy burning the burgers – is obviously well accustomed to his life in the light. And it suits him; he looks so relaxed and at ease as he talks happily to the guests – mostly Sammy’s friends from Vice, who he’s never even met before.

He knows their names though; having been the one who helped Dean organize the damned bachelor party in under a week. Well. Actually, in the interests of accuracy, it was more the other way around; Dean helped Cas by writing up a haphazard list of people that he was relatively sure Sam didn’t hate, presented it to his boyfriend and let him deal with everything else, only asking Dean’s opinion on prices.

He’s sure that he should be probably embarrassed that he’s too socially inept to sort out his own brother’s bachelor party, but it’s mostly overridden by an overwhelming surge of appreciation for the blessing that is his wonderful boyfriend.

 “You okay?” Said blessing appears at his side now, a sweating beer bottle grasped in his slim fingers.

“Yeah,” Dean musters up a smile as he nods at the group of men all shouting contradicting advice at Bobby in a vain effort to save the charred patties that once resembled meat, “Sam looks like he’s having fun anyway.” The _thank you for helping me not fuck this up_ in his statement is left unsaid, but heavily implied.

“Yes,” Cas agrees sincerely, not taking his eyes off Dean. “How about you?”

Dean shrugs. “It’s not my party.”

“True,” Castiel leans in conspiratorially, “but you _are_ the best man. And it’s important to the groom that you enjoy this too.”

Maybe in another life, Dean would have been the type of person to relish being the center of attention; someone brash and confident, someone capable of holding real conversations, of flirting with virtually anyone and feeling no shame. However, this is the one he has, and it’s not the absolute worst.

It is too clean and wholesome though.

On days like this, it makes Dean’s skin itch.

“I’m happy that Sam’s happy.” It’s not even a total lie. Seeing his brother happy does ease the weight in his chest that sometimes feels like it’s crushing the life out of him when he thinks about how Sam would feel if he found out what his older brother/hero does in his spare time.

“What a stock statement that is.” Cas sounds almost disappointed.

Dean quirks a small smile, turning to face his boyfriend properly. “Well, what kind of statement would make _you_ happy?”

Cas drains his beer and thrusts the empty into Dean’s hand. “An honest one.” He looks at Dean like he’s reading him, studying him, eyes skimming over his face, as if checking for the chink in the armor. “But I fear that it won’t happen without a little coercion.”

“…What?”

“You’ll see.”

Dean isn't sure whether to take it as a threat or a promise, but as Cas makes his way back inside their house - no doubt to get some more stuff for the grill - he resolves to find out.

 

***

 

The bass is making his teeth rattle. Next to him at the bar, Sam grins widely at Dean’s obvious discomfort. Repeating a mantra of ‘doing it for Sammy, doing it for Sammy’ doesn’t seem to help much when his ass is groped for the thousandth time in less than two hours and he’s surrounded by hundreds of sweaty bodies in some lavish, expensive club in downtown LA which has spongy walls and loud dance music.

Cas is hanging out with the girls; fiercely protective of Jess and the small circle of friends accompanying her on her bachelorette party. Although they’d started their evenings separately – the boys having the barbeque and the girls visiting a day spa – Cas had managed to work it so that the boys’ hastily planned party coincided with the girls’ at the end of the night. After all, Jess’s Maid of Honor hadn’t left it until three weeks before the wedding to organize their party.

Sam bumps his shoulder into Dean’s, leaning closer so that he can be heard over the music. “I don’t know why you look so miserable. At least you didn’t get yourself saddled with the women, like poor old Cas.” Sam’s voice is tinged with fond humor, so Dean brings a touch of sarcasm to the evening with his reply,

“Oh yeah, an evening spent with a group of beautiful ladies, what a real hardship for him.”

Sam flashes a smile; one that shows the dimples that seem to have women falling over themselves for him. It’s like he’s a whole bag of cute puppies. In the same vein, Dean vacantly wonders if his brother is receiving as many ass-grabs as he himself is, because if so, Sam is doing a spectacular job of hiding it.

He’s about to ask, when one of the guys from Vice – Garth, Dean thinks – taps him on the shoulder and points at the other side of the circular bar where Jess is standing, gesturing frantically to a nearby door. He looks to Sam for some kind of explanation, but his brother – helpful as always – just shrugs. He drains the rest of his beer and then begins making his way to the area Sam’s fiancée was pointing at.

He winds through the sweat-soaked bodies, following the blond hair through the doorway, into the dimly lit corridor which seems to have stair access to the VIP part of the club. The heavy door thumps closed behind them, muting the music so that it’s no more than a dull, muffled thud, which Dean is extremely grateful for. He can actually just about hear himself think now.

“Dean!” Jess is calm enough, but there’s a hint of worry in her tone.

“Everything okay?”

She hesitates, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Well, Cas is kind of drunk.”

“What?” Dean’s been drinking himself – not enough to get drunk, never enough for that – and it’s not like he was expecting Cas to stay sober, so he’s unclear on why Jess is eyeing him with a wary expression as if Dean is going to go into some kind of meltdown.

“No, like _really_ drunk.”

At Dean’s skeptical eyebrow lift, she looks apologetic, adding in a rushed explanation. “He’s been wound so tight recently, and you don’t seem to notice and we thought it would help to get him drunk enough so that he could let loose for a change, you know.”

Ah, and there it is. So Cas isn’t drunk. He’s _wasted_. Which still isn’t really enough to warrant her biting her lip as if she’s waiting to be reprimanded for irresponsibility or some shit, but Dean isn’t massively worried. In fact, he’s glad that Cas has had the opportunity to have some fun; sitting in front of a computer all day, waiting for Dean to come home can hardly be stimulating.

“Where is he?”

She points again, this time further down the hallway to a figure on the floor; Cas. He’s slumped over, barely moving, and with his back to the wall, legs straight out in front of him, he looks more like an inanimate ventriloquist’s dummy than a living, breathing person.

Well, fuck.

The closer to Cas he gets, the tighter Dean’s throat feels, until he’s barely able to breathe. Cas looks like he’s been fucked six ways from Sunday and he’s clearly not even trying to cling to any vestiges of dignity. It’s a sight Dean’s been privy to one-too-many-a-time when questioning on-site witnesses, but Cas has never even come close to being this reckless before.

Dean drops down on his haunches in front of his boyfriend, discreetly checking for any signs of injury, and – thankfully – finding none, he turns his attention to the words spilling out of Castiel’s mouth. Sure, it’s definitely the English language, but without context, the garbled sentences make no sense to Dean’s ears.

“Cas.”

His boyfriend slurs something that might have started out life as a word, but now just sounds like a mangled approximation of one. In his periphery, he can see Jess hovering nearby, arms bracketed across her chest.

“Cas, babe. I need you to look at me.”

Brilliant blue catches Dean and he abruptly knows how the fly feels in that poem he was obsessed with in eighth grade.

_Come hither, hither pretty fly…_

“Dean?” Cas breathes, like he’s seeing Dean for the very first time, all astonishment and wonder.

Dean mentally shakes himself, shedding the concerned boyfriend act and stepping into impersonal police officer mode, hoping to stir a coherent response out of Cas, who’s looking more and more like he’s on the verge of jumping Dean’s bones or passing out.

“Castiel, are you okay? Have you taken anything? Has anyone hurt you?”

Cas’s face breaks into a ridiculous, inebriated grin that Dean has never seen before; it’s a little terrifying how far removed from his meek boyfriend this is. “You… you have… _the_ finest ass.” Dean cocks an unimpressed brow at the non-sequiter, though internally his concern is building by the second. Besides Sammy, Cas is his only real constant and his anchor to the real world; the person that keeps him in touch with his humanity and who, apparently, has also done his level best to ensure that he’s too intoxicated to even stand at the moment, so yeah, Dean’s entitled to be freaking the fuck out.

Unsure of how else to reply, Dean goes for, “Err, thanks Cas.”

Cas nods his head jerkily to himself, confirming something that probably makes complete sense to his intoxicated brain. “You…need to let me see more of you, Dean.”

Dean baulks, pulling away from Cas’s outstretched hands that were mere centimeters away from the front of Dean’s shirt. He’s not sure how to take that sentence; there’s more than one interpretation and at the moment, he’s not willing to leave it to chance.

“What?”

Thankfully, Cas clears up the confusion in Dean’s mind with his next slurred sentence. Or not.

“You’re…always busy with… _something_ else.” He sticks his bottom lip out, pouting, and grips Dean’s wrist, way too tightly for someone so drunk.  “Why don’t you fuck me like you used to? Hmm?...I liked being able to really _see_ you… I miss it.”

Dean is suddenly and inexplicably reminded of a phrase that Benny often uses when they charge some doe-eyed lover or tween with murder, and whilst objectively, he’s aware of how ‘ _Satan in a Sunday hat’_ can be used to describe himself – Hell, it was something frequently said about Ted Bundy, and Dean’s at least twice as pretty  _and_ he’s topped Bundy’s kill count – he’s not yet sure how it’s applicable to Cas, though he can’t shake the cold chill snaking up his spine.

Like maybe Cas isn’t quite the angel Dean imagined. Which is concerning for so many different reasons that Dean just stares, as if Castiel is going to suddenly spill all of his thoughts out, like someone injected with truth serum in those stupid-ass spy movies that Sam loves.

But of course, nothing is ever that easy.

 “What the fuck are you actually talking about, Cas?”

 “You know…Two peas in a pod. Isn’t that a stupid phrase?” When he realizes that Dean does not share his feelings on the matter, he presses on, unperturbed. “You’ve gotta know, right? I mean how can you not?” Cas’s eyelids droop and he looks like he’s on the verge of passing out. “You’re a detective… You… you…detect things…”

“Cas.”

But it’s too late, he’s gone.

 

***

 

It’s not long before nine thirty the next morning, when Cas appears, padding barefoot across the linoleum floor of their kitchen, looking more disheveled than Dean’s ever seen him; everything about him reeks of discomposure and even his pajama pants are twisted on his hips, signaling a restless sleep.

Dean wouldn’t know how accurate the assumption is; he made a point of sleeping on the couch. Not that he really slept.

Watching him closely over the paper that he’s pretending to read, Dean takes in the slump of Cas’s shoulders, the drained expression, the stifled yawn as Castiel presses a cold carton of orange juice to his forehead and leans sideways into the refrigerator door.

A few seconds tick by in an uncomfortable silence.

Cas yawns again, jaw cracking on the peak of it, before he mumbles a low, slightly awkward, “good morning Dean.”

And then the tension in Dean bursts like a dam, and he’s got absolutely no excuse for his rather impolite reply of, “Cas, what the _fuck_ was last night all about?” Though, really, he couldn’t give a shit, because it’s not etiquette or social protocol that’s his driving force this morning; it’s an exhausting need to _know_. The very same one that hadn’t let him sleep all night.

Castiel looks at him, really looks at him. Something flickers behind his eyes and then it’s gone again. He sighs and places the juice down on the kitchen counter and starts a search for tumblers. “Nothing.” He mutters, his back to Dean as he pushes up on the balls of his feet to reach the top shelf of the cabinet.

“Nothing?” Dean repeats, rising out of his chair, making an aborted move to help his boyfriend as he usually would, his extra two inches of height probably not helping as much as Cas makes out, but Dean enjoys playing hero to Cas’s damsel anytime he can. Today, however, he stands by and watches Cas easily grab a glass down.

Well, that’s that little illusion ruined.

 “You scared the Hell out of me.” Dean intones when he’s greeted with his boyfriends’ silence, back still to Dean as he uncaps the juice and pours himself half a glass.

“If it’s any consolation, I scared the Hell out of myself.”

“Not really, no.”

“What do you want me to say Dean?” Cas’s tone is edging closer to impatience, replacing the carton in the fridge and slamming the door shut. “I got drunk. It’s the first time I’ve been properly drunk since I met you. I think I can be forgiven this once.”

Dean is about to reply, but his phone bursting into life in his pocket cuts off his train of thought. He flips it open, not taking his eyes off Cas, who stares back as lifts the glass to his lips, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

“Winchester.”

“Dean,” It’s Benny, sounding far too cheerful for this early in the morning. “We’ve got a body by the Basin.”

He can feel his pulse quickening already, before he even knows. “Is it our guy?”

“Too early to tell brother, the body is more decomposed than the others. Couple of days or so Ed thinks.”

Fuck. He has to get there now. The bullshit with Cas will have to wait. “Be there as soon as I can.” He hangs up and turns away from Cas, spinning on his heel and striding into the lounge. “I’ve got a crime scene to get to.”

Cas follows slowly, almost reluctant and watches him silently as he gathers his equipment, remaining so, until Dean’s clipping his holster into place.

“What’s it going to take for you to notice me, Dean?” He asks quietly, but there’s an urgency there that Dean can’t ignore.

“What?” Dean stops dead and looks at his boyfriend, mind wavering indecisively between intense confusion and mild irritation.

“There’s always something more important happening,” Castiel enunciates carefully, leaning against the wall of the arch linking the lounge and the kitchen, “I am at the bottom of your priorities, and it’s wearing a little thin.” There’s a warning behind those usually soft blue eyes, but Dean is too busy and/or irresponsible to pay it the due attention he feels deep in his bones that it deserves.

“Can we not talk about this later?” He grabs his badge and car keys off the sideboard, in a hurry to be at the crime scene, but more to not be having this conversation.

Castiel shakes his head sadly, “I think that may have be the definition of irony. It’d be funny if you were doing it intentionally.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” He says it even though there’s every possibility that he’s the one who’s being ridiculous. And childish. And cowardly. And lots of other unkind adjectives.

Cas holds both of his hands up, physically putting up a barrier, creating distance between Dean and himself, effectively closing himself off. ”You know what Dean? I’m done. You carry on coming home at fuck knows what time, keeping me in the goddamned dark… How can you be happy like this, ‘cause I’m sure as Hell not.”

Now is the time to be magnanimous, but social cues are not his strong point – a fact known by everyone he loves and vice versa – so he feels safe dismissing the gruff voice of his father at the back of his mind, shouting at him to do the right thing, in favor of doing the _wrong_ thing.

“I don’t have time for this.”

Just how wrong it is, becomes apparent around a second too late; after he’s said it and Cas has heard it.

Cas’s eyes harden further and Dean would be lying if he said that his boyfriend wasn’t freaking him the fuck out, reminiscent of the previous evening, minus the alcohol, but he has more pressing things to deal with than his hungover boyfriend being inexplicably cranky.

“You’re not listening to me, Dean.”

Which may be true, but even still, it makes him illogically annoyed that Cas is pointing it out in such a tactless way. Whilst simultaneously wasting his time. Time that he could be at the crime scene, getting closer to someone who _understands_ him. “And you’re not listening to me, Cas. I have somewhere to be.”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about.” Cas sighs, resigned, “another Basin victim I suppose?”

Dean narrows his eyes, but says nothing.

“Just a guess,” Castiel shrugs with a nonchalance that Dean knows is faked, but he can’t – or more accurately – _won’t_ spare the brain cells needed to decipher his boyfriend’s body language right now. “It’s not like you’re interested in anything else anymore. Go.” He waves a hand dismissively, but Dean doesn’t move, unsure whether he should try to rectify whatever the Hell is happening between them or run off to work like a coward and leave Cas to deal with his shit.

He tries a last-ditch attempt to paper over the cracks; at least until he can get his brain back online, “I love you C-.”

Castiel cuts him off with a hostile gesture. “I’m sure you think you do.” It sounds so cold, so far-removed from everything that Cas represents in his life. The cracks now seem more like gaping chasms as the slow realization dawns that Dean quite possibly does not know his boyfriend as well as he thought.

It stings like a vinegar on an open wound – sharp and fuzzy all at once, and it’s not a feeling that he would have ever imagined getting up close and personal with, but from the start, Castiel has been someone who has knocked down more of Dean’s emotional blockades than he’d realized (until it was too late), so he can’t honestly be surprised by it.

Steely eyes hold his gaze for a long moment, unstoppable force meeting immovable object. Something – _someone_ – has got to give.

As it turns out, it’s Dean.

“Fine.” He spits with more malice than he feels, “Do whatever the fuck you want.”

Castiel barely flickers at the venomous retort, which in itself is strange, but really, it can be added to the fucking pile of _strange_ that Cas has been in the last 24 hours. “Thanks for your permission.”

They’ve had arguments before, but none where Cas has seemed so detached, as if he’s watching the whole scene from afar rather than actively participating. “Jesus Christ Cas, what the Hell is wrong with you? You were fine yesterday-“

“Of course,” there’s sarcastic amusement evident in Castiel’s voice, “because you’ve been paying _such_ close attention, right?”

Dean frowns. So okay, since the last Basin body was found he’s been a little preoccupied, maybe staying a bit later at the station, going through the files with a fine-tooth comb for anything that could put him ahead of Benny in their quest to find the vigilante, but it’s not like he’s been missing dinners or forgetting shit –

Except that he has. So caught up in his fantasy of finding – what could potentially be – a friend, or at least an equal, there have been at least two occasions in the last week alone where he’s been late (hours, not minutes) home and one time where it got so late that he just slept at the station.

So maybe Cas has a point.

No. Scratch that. Cas definitely has a point.

Dean is too stunned by the revelation to apologize in the way that Cas needs right now. Instead he turns away from Castiel, from the situation and is halfway out of the door before he hears his boyfriend say something that sounds an awful lot like a low curse, but Dean knows that if he stops now, he’s going to end up revealing even more of himself than he really wants to.

It’s safer to just keep going and it’s not until he’s seated in his car, seatbelt buckled and key ready to turn in the ignition that he allows himself to think.

He’s quite possibly overreacting on par with the woman who sued Walmart over two cents, but something about his interactions with Castiel in the last 24 hours have left him cold and all his brain keeps – helpfully – offering are calmly spoken words in a Louisiana lilt,

_“I tell you what brother, that boy is Satan in a Sunday hat.”_


	5. Chapter Four - Psychopathy Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing my level best to make up for lost time!
> 
> Again, thanks to the awesome people who are reading and commenting etc.

The Los Angeles Basin is big. Like 50 miles of pretty much nothing but sediment. The odds of finding a body without someone _wanting_ it to be found are rather slim and LA’s best natural resource for disposing of virtually anything – the tar pits – aren’t far enough away to make the crime scene anything other than deliberate placement. It only solidifies Dean’s knee-jerk theory that the vigilante demands to be noticed.

It turns out that Benny isn’t the only one who made it to the crime scene; in fact there’s a plethora of uniforms rushing around, as Lieutenant Harvelle barks out instructions, trying to temper the chaos.

Dean approaches the cordoned off area, where he can see Benny talking to Henriksen. He flashes his badge at the police officer guarding the scene and slips under the tape, raising a hand in greeting when his partner catches sight of him.

“Dean, thank God you’re here brother.”

Dean’s pretty sure that God has absolutely nothing to do with it. Unless it’s the Old Testament God; the one who was all smite and punishment.

“Looks pretty crazy.” He gestures to the accurate re-enactment of a three-ringed-circus unfolding all around them. “What’s going on?”

“Harvelle clicked onto our theory shortly after I spoke to dispatch. She called the press before we left the station. They’ve even got a moniker ready; The Basin Vigilante.”

Dean barely refrains from rolling his eyes. Zodiac, BTK, Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam… all of the names the media dream up are utterly ridiculous, but people seem to have a morbid fascination with murderers spanning thousands of years, and of course, even the bible has Cain and Abel. And that’s just general interest; the whole bizarre groupie thing is another creep show entirely. After all, Manson had women throwing themselves at him and the Night Stalker got married after he was incarcerated.

Hybristophilia is the official name for it. Dean looked it up.

Benny motions for Dean to follow him to the body, which is that of a Caucasian male, late 30s, dark hair, maybe Dean’s height, slightly smaller build though and no distinguishing features. There’s a single gunshot wound to the abdomen, but no blood on or near the corpse, suggesting that he was killed elsewhere and dumped here.

Dean would bet his yearly salary that their ‘victim’ was an evil son of a bitch who let his own targets bleed out from a stomach wound. Probably, slowly and painfully.

Dean only hopes that his last moments were filled with a fraction of the agony he inflicted on others.

“Who found the body?”

Benny opens his mouth to answer, but he’s unceremoniously interrupted by a very angry sergeant blazing a path through the teams of people swarming around. “I’m surrounded by morons!”

Which, given the present company of media locusts, is probably a fair evaluation.

Benny glances sideways at Dean briefly before flashing Henriksen a bright smile, “You sure you’re not trapped in a hall of mirrors, Victor?”

Dean huffs a laugh for the first time in what could possibly be days, more exhaustion than actual humor, but at least he’s putting in an effort to appear human, even though he’s feeling far from it.

Everything with Cas up until now has been so straightforward and every step they’ve taken – right from the very first date up to them moving in together – has been choreographed and agonized over by Dean to make sure that they appear as natural as possible, and only now Cas is deciding that it’s not good enough; that _Dean_ isn’t good enough?

Is that even what happened?

Or is it Cas giving him a taste of his own medicine? Showing him what it’s like living with someone so dead inside? Because it’s certainly making him think twice.

“What’s wrong brother?” Benny’s standing patiently, watching Dean with thinly-veiled concern. Luckily, Henriksen has already disappeared out of range, probably shouting at some poor rookie who’s new out in the field.

Dean tries on his best smile and finds it not as good a fit as usual; too tight around the edges, like he’s wearing somebody else’s skin. He opts to tell Benny a half-truth. “Cas and I had a fight. A bad one.”

“Oh shit, no way. You guys are regular as the seasons. If you’re in trouble then there’s no hope for the rest of us.”

Dean waves a dismissive hand, trying to allay Benny’s worries, but inside, he’s churning the events of the last day over in his mind, trying to figure out exactly when everything fell so spectacularly to pieces. “It’s okay. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

It’s not and he’s not.

Benny doesn’t look convinced, but thankfully he lets it go and turns away from Dean to bend down and get a closer view of the body. Dean joins him, dropping into a crouch.

There’s nothing that really stands out; no ligature marks on the wrists or ankles, so he wasn’t tied up before he was killed… and that’s about it. It’s a straightforward, relatively uninteresting crime scene until Benny snaps on a pair of latex gloves and starts rifling through the pockets of the cheap three-piece-suit that the vic is wearing.

The first thing he pulls out of the suit jackets’ inner right pocket is a photograph. He flips it over, eyes scanning for any kind of clue. Finding none, he turns to Dean and shrugs.

“Care to hazard a guess as to what this is about?” He awkwardly tugs a glove off and waits for Dean to put it on before he passes the Polaroid (does anyone still use them anymore?) to Dean for him to inspect.

It’s a photograph of a license plate; fairly innocuous – if a little random for someone to have a picture of, but hey, it takes all sorts – in principle, but there’s something about it…

Holy shit.

Something on his face must show, because Benny’s suddenly crowding in his space, concern creasing his brow and Dean is going to be fucking sick.

He’s not sure how this day could really get much worse, but at this moment he’s not quite willing to goad fate into a round of let’s-fuck-with-Dean-Winchester chicken, and so he just hopes blindly – he can’t bring himself to pray; he’s not a hypocrite – that whatever cosmic karma the universe is doling out, that it’s done for the day, because there’s only so much he can take.

“What is it?”

Dean’s brain fumbles for a reasonable excuse. “Sorry Benny, I’m just feeling kind of bad after the fight with Cas. Can I meet you back at the station?”

“Sure brother, not like there ain’t enough of us here anyway.”

Dean manages a small smile, straightening up. “Thanks Benny.” He hands the photo back, yanks the glove off, and dazedly begins making his way back towards his car. He hears his name getting called by at least three or four different voices, but he doesn’t stop until he’s safely inside the impersonal Nissan.

For the second time in as many hours, he finds himself staring blankly out of the windshield, panic trickling into his brain like icy water. Except this time, it’s a little more heart-attack inducing than a pissed-off boyfriend.

The photo on the dead man’s body is of the car he used less than a week ago to transport George Harvey up into the mountains.

 

***

 

So, realistically, it can mean one of two things.

Either it’s a complete coincidence and the dead guy that the vigilante killed just _happens_ to have a picture of a car that he stole to transport an unconscious pedophile in or, once again, it’s deliberate placement.

The killer just gets more interesting by the moment.

It’s only after a good long while of angsting that he realizes he’s looking at this all wrong. If the vigilante wanted to expose Dean, he would have been able to with little to no effort on his part. If he knew about the car then he also knew about what Dean transported in that car and exactly what it means.

He could’ve uncovered Dean, but yet he didn’t. Instead he just gave a passing nod, letting Dean know that he’s on his – or her – radar.

He vaguely wonders that if they teamed up, who would be Batman and who would be Robin. Dean definitely has the build for Batman, but then again, what if the vigilante is bigger? Maybe he – or she, though that’s statistically unlikely –could help with the heavy lifting. That would be awesome. They could plan kills together, swap stories and trade methods.

The whole idea of it makes Dean completely forget what he was even worried about in the first place. This person is a friend, not a foe and is also – incidentally – the only person alive who knows what Dean does in his spare time.

His father had known; was the one who turned his eldest son into an effective killer after the death of his wife – Dean and Sam’s mother – at the hands of another murderer; a recently-paroled scumbag who had broken into their family home, intent on stealing anything he could carry and killing anyone who got in his way.

Which turned out to be Mary Winchester.

The unfortunate twist – that anybody with an outsider’s perspective could have seen coming – was that John Winchester had been so successful in his attempts at raising the perfect killer that he couldn’t see the irony of what he had done until it was too late.

It proved too much and he wrapped his truck around a telegraph pole after a standard night of heavy drinking.

The pain of losing his mother to a murdering bastard paled in comparison to the pain of knowing that _he_ was the murdering bastard responsible for his father’s demise.

It ate away at him for months, throbbing like a headache whenever he saw something that reminded him of his dad, nothing more so than his 1967 Chevy Impala currently sitting in Dean’s garage, untouched since his move to LA.

His self-loathing had to be put on the backburner though, because by then the need to hunt down evil fuckers was ingrained too deep for Dean to dig out. He _had_ to make things right; to rebalance the world. He understood from the beginning that he was giving up a chance of a normal life for something bigger than himself and whilst he might not be the archetype of a hero, he had to cling on to the title, lest he trap himself in another self-flagellation spiral.

The vigilante was somebody who could potentially feel the same; somebody else who was alone in the world. A kindred spirit.

It was about as close to romanticizing anything as he’d ever get.

Which was all kinds of fucked up.

“Dean!” Benny’s already rolling a chair across the threadbare carpet and throwing crime scene photos onto Dean’s desk, mere seconds after his return to the station. “It has to be our guy. Driving license on the body that I found after you left, confirms the vic as a Mr Christopher Davies. I ran his name through the database, and guess what?”

Even in his sleep-deprived, still-reeling state, Dean is just about capable of scraping enough brain cells together to work out what Benny is bursting to tell him.

“He’s a scumbag?” Dean offers pithily, regretting his tone when he sees his partner’s excitement receding faster than Captain Singer’s hairline. “Sorry Benny. It’s been a tough day already.”

“It’s okay brother, I get it. I’d be out of sorts if Andrea put me through it before work too. Did you even get any sleep?”

“Not really, no.” He admits, exhaustion beginning to seep into his bones. “Cas got pretty drunk last night and I was so worried I barely slept at all. And then we had that massive fight this morning-“ _And a serial killer knows my secret that I’ve spent years hiding, and I’m not sure whether to be relieved or worried, and the not-knowing, not being in control is crippling me._

Sisyphus knew nothing of unending frustration by comparison.

“Maybe you should call it quits for the day?” Benny suggests with that sincere smile of his. “You never take time off, so I’m sure Harvelle and Singer can let it slide. I’ll cover for you.”

“Yeah,” Dean readily agrees; once he’s had some sleep, he’ll be able to work through this shit logically and pragmatically. “I think you might be right. Thanks Benny.”

He’s up, out of his chair and heading towards the elevators before his partner can change his mind.

 

 

***

 

He’s not dreading going home, more tired than anything else, but there’s a nervousness, bordering on anticipation tingling just under his skin and he can’t help wishing that Cas had a normal job; one that required him to actually leave the house so that Dean wouldn’t have to face his boyfriend before he’s had a chance to catch up on sleep so that he can function at a basic level.

When Dean walks in, closing the door behind him with a quiet _snick,_ Cas barely looks up from his position, reclining on the couch. Almost as if he was expecting Dean home early.

“Hey Cas,” He stands awkwardly in the doorway, jiggling his keys in his hand, feeling the smooth metal of the key ring Cas bought him on their last holiday, against his palm.

“Hey,” his boyfriend replies disinterestedly, pointing the remote at their flat screen TV and flicking to another channel.

“I’m sorry for being a prick earlier.” Dean blurts, not thinking, just wanting to get horizontal and sleep the last day and a half away. “I’ve had a chance to think about what you said this morning, and you’re right. I’ve been neglecting you in favor of work and it’s not fair on you at all. You’ve been nothing but wonderful to me and I get that I’ve been kind of throwing it back in your face recently.” The words are tumbling out of his mouth, rolling off his tongue and he’s aware that he’s rambling but it’s okay because Cas is looking at him, his beautiful clear blue eyes filled with concern and love, and he’s forgiven, thank fucking Christ.

“It’s okay.” Cas says in a quiet voice. “I overreacted and I’m sorry.”

And just like that, Dean feels better; a weight lifted from his shoulders. Castiel beckons Dean over to him and Dean goes, easy as anything, dropping down into the soft cushions next to the reassuring warmth of Cas, because he needs this. He needs some semblance of normality to ground himself.

He settles back into the couch, savoring the comfort and allowing his mind to blank as the news anchor prattles on in the background about the price of oil – or whatever, Dean is barely listening.

He’s on the precipice of sweet oblivion when he hears the familiar voice of his lieutenant, and it’s like his brain is hardwired to respond to her commanding tone, because within seconds, he’s sitting up, his senses keener and he’s more awake than he’s felt all day, even though he still hasn’t actually slept.

It must be the press release that she was getting ready for earlier in the day because it’s at the crime scene, though the body is now concealed by a forensics tent.

“They’ve given the murderer a stupid fucking nickname.” Cas says, a hard edge to his voice.

Dean scrubs a hand over his face, stifling a yawn. “Yeah, it’s pretty lame.” He agrees totally with the assessment, though he’s surprised that Cas seems to feel strongly about it. “Crappy serial killer names a hot button for you Cas?”

“What it represents is what bothers me. The glamorization of something so dark and abhorrent. If they resorted to calling them psycho number 128 or whatever, then the novelty would soon wear off and people would just stop buying Gacy’s fucking artwork on eBay to hang in their lounge.”

Dean’s stunned into silence by the vehemence in his boyfriend’s tone.

It’s not until a commercial break that Cas speaks again.

“As an insider, why do you think people are so fascinated by serial killers?”

Dean’s heart seizes in his chest, and he blinks once, twice, before he grasps that Cas is referring to his job, not his hobby. He’s already paranoid because of the damned _Basin Vigilante_.

Heart rate struggling to return to normal, he clears his throat, “Well, I think that it’s because human beings by their – our – very nature are captivated by the dark side of humanity, and murderers define the outside parameters of what one human being can do to another. And it’s scary as fuck, so I guess it’s kind of an adrenaline rush for a lot of folks in a way. The same reason people go skydiving and shit.”

Cas looks impressed as he leans back, watching Dean out of the corner of his eye. “A vicarious thrill?”

Dean nods. “In a way, yeah.” He pushes himself up off the couch, eager for a reprieve. For someone who was only this morning bemoaning Dean’s dedication to his job, Cas seems awfully curious himself. “Wanna order in tonight? Whatever you want?”

“Sure,” Cas beams up at him and Dean finds that he's unable to stop himself from returning the smile, despite the residual awkwardness. He feels considerably more composed now than he did when he left the station. Just righting things with Cas has made such a difference; as usual he’d underestimated Cas’s importance in his life.

One day he’d learn not to.

He’s already in the kitchen, pulling out the takeaway menus, hoping that Cas is hungry enough to pick somewhere that has something other than falafel and yoghurt, ‘cause he’s definitely craving some real food for once (after today, he's entitled), when he hears his boyfriend calling out to him.

He pokes his head back into the lounge, “huh?”

Cas twists his body so that he can look at Dean over the back of the couch, bringing one knee up on the cushions. “I was just asking that if you have any leads on the ‘Basin Vigilante’.”

Dean quirks a smile at his boyfriend’s use of air quotations. “Not yet.”

Cas turns back to the TV. “That’s a shame. He needs to be brought to justice as quickly as possible.”

“Mmhmm,” Dean agrees, not really listening; too busy checking the handful of menus for opening times, hoping against all hope that every last one of the healthy places is closed.

“Before he does any more damage.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure the LAPD will get him. They have their best cop on the case after all.”

The realization that’s been tickling at the edge of his consciousness all day hits him with the brutality of a blast to the chest from a .45. It’s enough to leave him reeling, stomach lurching, and just like that all of his fuzzy happy feelings are immediately replaced by the sensation of the blood freezing in his veins.

Fuck, fuck _fuck_.

It’s easy to blame his slowness on his lack of sleep or the argument with Cas, but really, he should have clicked with it as soon as he’d seen the picture.

He’s more than a little ashamed.

The vigilante planted a photo on the dead guy. Which means that he knows about Dean’s extra-curricular activities. He’s only just coming to terms with that.

But it gets so much worse, because looking at it from another perspective; _the vigilante planted a photo on the dead guy_. At a _crime scene_. That only the police and forensics would have access to.

Which means that he knows that Dean is an officer of the law.

He knows about Dean’s day job _and_ his evening one.

.

.

.

Which means that he knows exactly who Dean Winchester really is.


	6. Chapter Five - Hate the sin, not the sinner...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the continued support and I hope you enjoy this chapter! Dean angsting is always good fun.

“The difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is that the former doesn’t have any morals, whilst the latter does, but they’re way off the reservation?” Sam cautiously cracks one eye open and squints at Dean, waiting for confirmation or correction.

Dean swallows around a mouthful of water, “In so many words, yeah. Though you’ll have to go further in-depth than that.” He stares down at the plastic bottle in his right hand as if it’s personally affronted him. Tasteless, boring water. It’s only lunchtime, and he’s due back at work in around ten minutes, but he’s seriously tempted by the prospect of a beer.

Sam sighs, slapping his palm against the heavy hardback book on the café table. “Fuck. I’m so nervous. Why did I have to have this assessment so close to the wedding? As if I didn’t have enough shit to be worried about.”

_You think you’ve got worries, Sammy?_

But instead, he recaps his water, screwing the lid back into place with a little more force than is strictly necessary, “You’ll be fine. You know your stuff.”

Sam tilts his gaze up from the pages, hazel eyes narrowed in suspicion, brow creased. “You okay? You’ve been a bit weird since my bachelor party.”

It’s the salad’s turn to feel the wrath of Dean as he attempts to spear a leaf of lettuce on his fork. This grey man directive bullshit is really getting old. Especially now that there’s somebody else in the world that sees him for who he is and hasn’t gone running for the hills.

And it’s for that very reason that he _has_ to find the vigilante before his colleagues do. Though, with practically nothing to go on and short of spending every waking moment at the Basin in the hopes of him showing up, Dean is fresh out of ideas on just how to achieve it.

“I’m fine Sam. Just kind of sick of salads.” It’s half-true at least, so he doesn’t need to feel bad about lying to his brother. Which is a breath of fresh air.

Sam grins, “I don’t know when you became such a health freak; I remember when we were kids, you loved virtually anything that was bad for you in a minimum of sixty different ways. Especially Mom’s apple pie.”

A brief ache flutters in his chest; fragile and fleeting, like a butterfly’s wings.

“I grew up.” He says flatly.

  _And dad drilled it into me that I had to blend into any situation or surrounding without standing out, to conceal my true intent, personality and nature from everybody. Including you, Sammy._

It was getting increasingly hard not to be mad at their father.

“Yeah, yeah.”

They sit in comfortable silence whilst Dean grimaces his way through the remainder of his rabbit food and Sam resumes reading, eyes dancing over the words, soaking in the information.

Sam has always been a fast learner; smart and with a thirst for knowledge that their dad had done his best to purge out of him at an early age, impressing his experiences as an officer of the law onto them frequently and vehemently, citing that he didn’t want Sammy to become ‘one of those college types without an honest day’s work under their belts; all style over substance’.

Sam had been destined for greatness and John Winchester clipped his wings, kept him close, so whilst Sam could leave the nest, it was ensured that he’d never stray too far.

“Do you think that I’ll fit in with the homicide guys?”

_No. You’re too good for it. They’ll see it and wonder about you. Wonder why you’re not some hotshot lawyer, swimming in a pool of money with Jess at your side and kids with her blond hair and your hazel eyes, because they’ll **know**. They’ll know that you deserve so much more than this._

It’s on the tip of his tongue, closest it’s ever been to spilling out into the space between them. Dean wants to say it, scream it, he really does; wants to tell their father to go fuck himself in the only way he can now that he’s dead –

But instead, he says, “Sure you will Sammy.”

It’s the closest he’s ever been to stepping out of the shadows.

***

When he gets back to the station after his lunch with Sam, he finds an air of somber uneasiness draped over the whole building like a blanket. As soon as he walks in, it’s immediately obvious that something bad has happened in the 58 minutes he was absent.

He doesn’t bother asking the receptionist, Mandy. She’s never liked him much since he rejected her advances at the Christmas party last year with an apparent coldness that she’d likened to a winter in Russia. His mood is already soured by the lack of _actual_ food he’s eaten – is supposed to eat on a daily basis –  so it’s definitely for the best that he skips that interaction.

He steps into the empty elevator and presses the button for the sixth floor.

The ride up gives him enough time to wonder why the fuck he’s still following his father’s guidelines after all this time. It’s painfully obvious that the man didn’t care enough about either of his sons, so why is Dean so fixed on adhering to a bunch of bullshit set out by a man who owes both him and Sam far more than he left them with?

_Because it’s kept you safe. Undetected._

Though apparently not, because now someone knows who and what he is.

When the doors ping open on Homicide, he’s greeted by the sight of a bedraggled looking Benny and a practically empty bullpen.

He steps out of the elevator and towards the other detective, who’s rifling through the stack of case files _still_ on his desk, even though he’s been told multiple times to put them back into archives. “What’s happened?” Though he can hazard a fairly accurate guess. The only time nearly everyone leaves the station is when –

“One of our own has been killed.”

Well that explains it.

A cop dying is like some modern-day version of the Viking-warrior-dying-in-combat thing. Getting killed in the line of duty is high honor and high profile. He’ll surely rise to Valhalla, to the hall with the golden shields and all that shit.

It’s something that Dean used to resent before he joined the force himself; not understanding why an officer’s life is worth more than somebody else’s, why such a massive fuss is made over what – at the end – is just another dead body. Undoubtedly a shame of course, but no more or less so than a mother getting stabbed in her own home for $100 worth of jewelry.

He hadn’t been looking at the bigger picture though.

If a normal Joe is killed, then sure, the murderer has broken the law, the rules, but cops are representatives of _society_ ; kill a cop and the murderer has broken their covenant with the _social order_.

It’s an informal way of declaring war on humanity as a whole, and it takes a very special kind of asshole to do it.

“Who?”

“Bryce Adams. Worked GND*. You knew him, right? He lived a couple of streets away from you?”

Dean knew him. Cas met his wife at someone’s retirement party about a year ago and spends a few hours there a week with her… Carol or something.

“Was he on duty at the time?”

Benny’s entire demeanor darkens. “No.”

“Fuck.” A cop getting killed on duty is sad, but not entirely unexpected. An off-duty cop getting singled out just because he’s an officer of the law is yet another step further away from civilization for the murderer. “What happened?”

“His body was found in his home about an hour ago. Singer has gone there personally with Harvelle, Henriksen and a couple of the others. After all it’s gonna be high profile. We’ve been left with the orders to concentrate on our Vigilante.”

Dean knows he should be relieved that the heat is off his comrade, at least for a short time. But there’s something about it all that seems too convenient. The day after the vigilante’s case hits the headlines there’s a call-the-media-to-arms case involving a dead cop; the only crime that captures the public’s fascination and disgust more than a serial killer.

Well, until he kills again.

Dean doesn’t hurt innocents. Never has, never will, but he doesn’t know anything about the vigilante really. Would he do something like this to take the heat off himself?

It’s not a question he can answer right now, not without being able to get closer.

“Winchester!”

Dean winces and exchanges a glance with Benny; communicating their pain to each other without the need for words.

He slowly turns around to face the source of the voice and is greeted by the sight of their forensic department in the form of Ed– wearing a Buffy The Vampire Slayer shirt underneath his lab coat – and Harry who has a ring on a cord around his neck, that Dean can only assume is some Tolkien-related thing.

Really, it’s a shame that they’re not identical twins, because they would make a perfect Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee in a stage production somewhere.

“Oh yeah,” Benny says wearily with a roll of his eyes like he’s just _done_ with them, “when you got here I was supposed to send you to see them.”

“Straight away Lafitte.” Harry pulls a face that’s somewhere between a parody of a stern librarian and The Rock’s infamous eyebrow lift.

“Well I’m here.” Dean mutters, sending a warning glance in Benny’s direction, refusing to be part of any bloodshed in the name of science or whatever. “Show me what you’ve got.”

They file into the lab which is sectioned off from the bullpen and the rest of the floor by a door which has a multi-colored sign tacked to it that reads: “No douche-nozzles!” and if Dean didn’t know better, he’d assume that it was a blatant lack of professionalism, but he does know better because Harry and Ed are two of the best lab techs he’s ever worked with.

Reluctant admiration gains them a lot of leeway from the majority of detectives in homicide.

 “Okay, okay.” Ed sits down on his computer chair, spins it around once, twice and then settles at the desk. Dean can practically _hear_ Benny’s eye roll.

“Prepare to be scienced, big guy.” Harry looks from Dean to Ed and then back again, nodding his head, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “You’re going to want to have our babies’ after this.” Ed wiggles the mouse to wake the computer up and Dean catches a glimpse of the background.

“Ghostfacers?” He asks, skepticism prevalent in his tone. “Like Ghostbusters?”

Behind him, Benny heaves a sigh.

“Yeah,” Harry says whilst Ed continues clicking through icons and bringing up pages. “We hunt ghosts. We have a website and everything.”

“What? You’re scientists, how can you seriously believe in ghosts?”

“Dean,” Benny’s warning tone conveys everything in the one word.

Apparently Harry picks up on it too, because he gives Dean a sly, knowing wink. “If you wanna know more you can always come on a ride-along. We go hunt ghosts every Tuesday.”

“Because ghosts have a schedule?”

“No dumbass. Because Ed and I have D&D on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; we go to the comic book store on Thursdays; and Saturdays we go out to hook up.”

Dean represses a shudder; he’s almost afraid to ask, “What about Sundays?”

“I am not drunk enough for this.” Benny mutters.

“Sunday is the day of the Lord.”

“Seriously?” Dean asks, unable to help himself.

There’s a brief pause and then Harry’s face breaks into a grin. “Nah, we’re just fucking with you. Sunday’s are recovery from Saturday night’s activities, if you catch my drift.” He leers and Dean is pretty sure that either they’re both still virgins or they’re fucking each other, so no, he doesn’t really catch their drift, but for the sake of Benny’s – and to some extent, his own – sanity, he keeps quiet and just nods.

“Here we are,” Ed says finally, after a small awkward silence. “So we ran the DNA recovered at the crime scene. Most of it was unusable, but because we’re awesome, we managed to salvage one decent print on the driving license.”

“Okay?” Dean prompts when Ed turns to look at him. “And?”

“We ran the print through the system and got a match.” Harry reaches for a piece of paper in the printer and passes it to Dean.

Dean’s eyes scan the page, over the lines and graphs until he reaches what he’s looking for. “Charles Bain?”

Harry passes him a case file. “He’s another criminal. Very much alive as far as we know.” Dean flips through the file, catching sight of his crimes, there in black and white; domestic violence, manslaughter.

He looks up and turns to face Benny. “Are you thinking what I am?”

“Yeah… He’s pointing us to his next victim.”

 

***

 

There’s the warm aroma of baked bread mingled with some other delicious-but-most-likely-healthy-food when Dean gets home, but no sign of Cas.

“Babe?” He wanders into the kitchen, stopping to check the mail that’s been propped up against the bread box; the first couple of letters turn out to be bills which he tosses onto the kitchen table - household money and bills are Cas's thing - before he gets to an unassuming manila envelope with a neatly typed label squarely in the middle.

The sound of the front door opening – and then a few seconds later, closing – pulls Dean away from the mysterious envelope, and he drops it back down onto the counter, resolving to remember to check it later. He ends up meeting Cas in the lounge, stopping a few feet away from him as his boyfriend as he wipes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, looking up at Dean, expression unreadable.

“I went to see Carol.” He offers with a tentative smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“How is she?” Dean asks, more out of politeness than anything else. He suspects that she’s a wailing mess of a person; too much emotion to be anything near okay.

“As well as can be expected, I guess. She’s just lost the love of her life.” Cas’s shrug is casual, but there’s something wistful about his words that sends a flare of shame through the very core of Dean. He knows that Cas is supposed to be the love of his life; his longest relationship, the closest to comfortable with another human being he’s ever been – Sam included – and yet whilst he would miss him, he’s not entirely convinced that he would be _destroyed_ if he lost Cas. Not like the wives, husbands, mothers, brothers who lose their _everything_ when someone they love dies.

Not like his father who – in the wake of his grief for the wife he lost – was prepared to train his son to be everything he saw in humanity and hated, and ultimately couldn’t live with.

There’s a fractional shift in Cas’s expression and Dean realizes that he’s just been standing, staring at Cas without actually replying.

“Sorry,” Dean says, rubbing the back of his neck in a nervous gesture, unsure of what else to say. It’s something that he hasn’t done for the best part of ten years.

This damned vigilante has him coming apart at the seams; he’s rebelling against his father’s plan, his instructions, shaking out of his cover, going against the grain of everything that he’s built himself and his entire life around, in favor of… what?

A fucking photograph at a crime scene, that’s what.

Something that doesn’t prove anything.

He’s spent the last few days fantasizing about meeting the person behind the murders, like a pre-pubescent girl and more embarrassingly, like it’s going to happen. Like the vigilante gives a shit about him outside the parameters of them sharing a pastime.

It doesn’t stop him _wanting_ though.

Most people want the picket fence, neighborhood watch and good job.

Dean has that and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. He’d trade it all in for a roach-infested motel, the open road and someone who can look him in the eye, see what’s underneath Dean’s skin, barely restrained, and still want him.

Someone who would prove his father wrong. Prove that Dean could be loved for everything he is, instead of everything his dad wished he was.

 _That’s_ the person who would send him into a barely functioning, utterly destroyed state if he ever lost them.

But that’s never going to happen, because such a person would need to exist first.

Pragmatically, he should count it as a blessing that it’s never going to happen.

He doesn’t.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *GND - Gang and Narcotics Division


	7. Chapter Six - The bullets scream to me from somewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plotty stuff happening!  
> Things are gonna spiral pretty quickly from here onwards, so... enjoy! :D

It’s been too long since Dean’s killed anybody and he’s starting to get the prickly feeling just under the surface of his skin, sharp, and itchy; like heat rash. He’s not even done any research into any potential candidates yet; far too distracted by the Vigilante and their next move, which speaks more about the importance of the fellow murderer in his life already, than any words ever could.

He wonders if they have any idea how affected by it all he is. Whether they have a life and family and go about their daily business like Dean has had to do for the last couple of weeks since he discovered that there’s someone else out there who _understands_. Whether it’s easy for them, whether they actually _give a shit_.

He lets out a loud sigh, fingers scraping over the rough stubble on his chin.

Or are they just as affected by Dean? Unable to sleep, only focused on contacting Dean in a safe way. Is the vigilante testing Dean? Seeing if he’s trustworthy? How can Dean prove his worth to someone who he has no idea how to contact, let alone identify?

Benny sways and bumps into him, nudging him out of his reverie just as their Lieutenant and Captain stride in to the briefing room, side by side, poker faces on and ready to play. They make quite a sight standing next to each other; Ellen is all hard lines and efficiency, Bobby… not so much – he’s a little less intense, though his blue-gray eyes are alert, sweeping over the crowd of gathered detectives with practiced ease.

“Right, so we’ve got two major cases on the go for those of you that have been under a rock for the last couple of days.” This morning the Lieutenant is dressed in her fiercest outfit – the gray pantsuit with a purple shirt – indicating that she means business. She’s not one for unsolveds and especially not cases involving cops or serial killers, so she’s going to be busting balls harder than usual, which is seriously unfortunate for Dean and his Vigilante friend.

“They’re both press hoggers so I want them off this board,” Singer steps forward and raps on the crime cases whiteboard with the information about the Adams murder front and center, “as soon as you can. We don’t tolerate cop killers in this city and we sure as shit don’t tolerate serial killers. Especially not with the Grim Sleepers’ trial coming up in a few months. Took us long enough to catch _that_ bastard.”

Dean inwardly winces at the name. Suddenly ‘Basin Vigilante’ doesn’t seem so bad.

The Lieutenant turns her attention to the back of the room, where he and Benny are loitering. As usual. “Winchester, Lafitte. What have you got for me?”

All eyes turn to him and his partner, and although he can’t see Henriksen right now, he can _feel_ the sergeant’s stare like a physical presence. Really, he should be used to it by now, but Dean has been too close to on edge recently, and the knowledge that Henriksen isn’t going to cut him some slack today – when he could really fucking do with it – grates on his nerves.

Benny flips open the file he’s hastily put together with crime scene photos from the various cold cases they’ve attributed to the Vigilante and the DNA that Ed and Harry had provided them with the day before. He clears his throat nervously.

“I’m not even sure where to start,” He mutters with a sideways glance at Dean.

“How about you tell us exactly what we’re dealing with?” Singer prompts.

“Okay, well, judging by the execution methods of each of the six victims, this guy knows what he’s doing and pays attention to the news, ‘cause so far he’s got every single method correct with an unnerving accuracy.”

“And for those of us who haven’t seen the crime scene and-or don’t know anything about the victims?” Singer says, gruffly, but not unkindly.

Dean steps in, catching Benny’s audible sigh of relief from his left; he’s never enjoyed presenting their theories to people en masse, so it’s often left to Dean. “Well, he’s a vigilante. He’s going after people who have themselves committed serious felonies and he’s killing them in the manner that they dispatched others. Kind of poetic justice, I guess.”

Bobby makes a thoughtful noise and rubs a palm under his bearded chin. “I don’t know whether we should be hunting this guy down or giving him a medal.”

His comment is met with several vague sounds of approval from around the room and a stern stare from Ellen.

_Definitely giving him a medal._

“Have we got any witnesses?”

“No,” Dean replies, “All the bodies have been killed elsewhere and dumped at the Basin; we’ve had no reports of people seeing either the murder itself or the dumping. There’s never any traceable DNA or any fibers on the body that we can use either.”

“Except for the last one.” Benny adds in quickly.

Dean nods. “Except for the last one. Forensics found a print on the driving license of the vic.”

“And?”

“And it belongs to a convicted felon. A Charles Bain. Spent 15 years inside on domestic violence and manslaughter charges.” Benny hands the file over to the Captain as Dean continues, “He beat his wife to death with a tire iron. No less than six public nuisance calls too, so it was a frequent occurrence for him to lay into her. He got the manslaughter charge due to some extenuating circumstances.”

“And what could they be?” Another detective – Walker, Dean thinks – says, voice tainted with anger, “That she made him do it? That she was fucking another man or whatever excuses these shitheads come up with?”

Dean ignores the outburst, though he totally agrees. “He was released about six months ago. Thought to be living down by the Marina Del Rey.”

Captain Singer looks up from the pages, “Thought to be?” and the same time Walker mutters, “Alright for some.”

“Yeah, we sent a couple of officers down there yesterday to pick him up and bring him in. He wasn’t at the address registered with his parole officer. They asked neighbors, but nobody has seen him for a couple of days.”

“Since we found the body of Christopher Davies.” Benny intones, voice almost comically heavy with implication.

A hush falls over the room as realization dawns.

It’s the Captain who breaks the silence, closing the folder and passing it back to Benny. “I take it you’re assuming that he’s the next victim rather than the Vigilante himself?” It’s a valid question and one that he and Benny have spent hours going back and forth over. Dean knows in his gut that the Vigilante is not some scumbag who killed his girlfriend. But unfortunately all murderers – whether they have good intentions or not – are tarred with the same brush in the eyes of the law.

“We’re certain that the Vigilante isn’t Charles Bain.”

Bobby huffs out a world-weary sigh. “So, if we take that at face value then it means that this Vigilante is telling us who the victim is, but not allowing us to save them. Why? Why tell us where to go without showing us how to get there?”

A small pause, then Dean gives the answer that he’s been considering since they found Davies, “He’s making a point.”

“What?”

“That the law is useless. Bain was let go. The system failed his victim, and here we are, failing all over again.”

“Great, just what I need. A lesson from a murdering psychopath,” someone says louder than the other speculative murmurs that have broken out in the room.

Holy _fuck_ , it’s a lesson.

“That’s one Hell of a theory Dean.” Singer says, looking to Harvelle.

“Yeah,” Dean mutters, but he barely hears it above the blood roaring in his ears.

Is it a lesson for him though? Because Dean doesn’t need to be taught – and the Vigilante knows that – so what the fuck is he trying to tell him? There has to be _something_ that he’s missing. Something innocuous that wouldn’t mean a lot to somebody else who looked at it…

_The picture. But what about it?_

He needs to look at that photo again.

But for now…

“Do you have a plan of action, detectives?” Harvelle asks, hand on hip, clearly impatient to be moving the discussion along to the point of resolution.

Benny looks uncertainly at Dean. “Well, we found a picture on the body of Davies. It’s only a car, but if the killer left it there, it’s gotta be significant in some way, right?”

Dean wants to argue, but Benny’s right. If he disagreed then he’d just be undermining his friend and the LAPD’s investigation. He’s okay with doing the latter in the name of solidarity for the Vigilante, but the former seems too harsh right now, especially when Benny’s ego needs the boost; he’s too used to being shot down, even though he does come up with some good theories from time to time; after all it was Benny who noticed the Vigilante’s pattern in the first place.

Right now, he’s not close enough to the truth to make Dean worry. He will cross and possibly burn that bridge when necessary.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, with a quick incline of his head. “It’s gotta be worth a shot at this stage.”

Singer and Harvelle exchange a glance, but then both nod in sync. “Okay,” Singer says. “You can go do that after the briefing. I want you staying here for the next part. I wanna know if you have any theories on the bastard that killed Adams.”

Dean nods and then Singer is diverting his attention elsewhere. “Henriksen, what have you got for us?”

“Okay, well the vic – Adams – was home alone. Wife was out shopping. Killer must have either had a key or be an expert lock picker because there was no sign of forced entry. Adams was shot twice in the back of the head. Poor bastard never suspected a thing –“

Dean allows himself to zone out. It’s not out of disrespect; he’s seen the crime scene photos, has a pretty good idea of whose style it is, and were he not such a slippery fucker to catch, he would already be ashes in the fucking mountains with all the other murderous bastards.

Alistair is an old school hitman; pure underground scum. He’ll kill anyone for the right price and he’ll even personalize the scene too. Like he’d done with Adams; spelling out ‘pig’ on the wall with the guy’s own blood. He’s in and out within seconds and the police can never seem to touch him. In Dean’s couple of years with the LAPD, he’s seen Alistair be suspected of more than a dozen crimes, but only brought in for questioning, once. Even then he’d been released within an hour when the witness had changed her statement.

She was found dead not even a day later.

“Dean? Care to grace us with a theory being as you have a knack for this sort of thing?” Harvelle’s authoritative tone pulls him out of his thoughts.

He hears a derisive scoff, undoubtedly Henriksen, before he speaks. “I’m pretty sure that it’s Alistair. Looks like his M.O.”

“He’s never gone after cops before.”

“That we know of.” Dean corrects his Lieutenant.

“What are you saying, Winchester?”

Dean shrugs. “I’m just saying that if someone wants anybody gone, then for the right price Alistair is there. If someone wants a murder kept quiet then I’m willing to bet that he can do discreet – or not – as in this case. Whoever he’s working for wants it high profile.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Henriksen bursts out, apparently unable to keep his thoughts inside his head anymore, glancing back and forth between Dean and his two superiors, “Captain, are you really going to listen to this bullshit? Alistair is going after cops now? Even he’s not that stupid!”

“He’s not stupid at all,” Dean replies coolly. “Otherwise we would have had him in custody months ago. Him being stupid would be a distinct advantage for us.”

“Well then, he’s clearly not going after cops now is he? ‘Cause that would make him stupid, and you just said yourself that he’s not stupid.” The sergeant folds his arms across his chest and leans back on his heels, smug grin in place like he’s won the argument with his well-timed witticisms, intelligence and flawless logic.

Dean struggles to keep his voice even when he responds. Sometimes Henriksen’s blind hatred for him clouds his judgment and it impedes investigations, “If someone sent Alistair after Adams, then that’s who we need to be looking for. Alistair is just the tool, the instrument. You need to be digging into Adams’ work in the GND. I’d say that he got close to the truth of something and someone sent Alistair to make him disappear. Find who sent Alistair. Cut the head off the snake.”

The Captain steps forward, officers parting like the sea in his path to Dean. “Why make it high profile by killing him in his own home? Why all the sensationalism? Wouldn’t it be better if they orchestrated some kind of mugging or something so that it didn’t look like he was specifically targeted? Surely it would make more sense for them to do it inconspicuously.”

Dean shrugs, “What use is a warning if nobody hears it?”

Once more, the whole room descends into silence.

Somebody whistles, low and impressed sounding.

Somebody else says, “Jesus _fuck_ , you’re good.”

“Too good.” Henriksen mutters, eyes narrowed in suspicion, unspoken accusations filtering behind his default angry expression.

“Almost as if I have insider knowledge?” Dean flashes Victor a pleasant smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Like I’m secretly a serial killer and after I clock out from my day job I go and kill people?”

The quiet rumble of laughter from the other detectives loosens some of the accumulated tension between him and the sergeant, thick like acrid smoke.

“Something like that,” Henriksen growls, bumping into Dean’s shoulder _hard,_ as he stomps out of the briefing room, body drawn taut with barely contained hostility and rage.

“Ignore him, Dean. He’s just upset that you have a better handle on his case than he does.” Benny pats him on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s take a gander at this photo and see what we can see.”

 

***

 

Dean’s eyes haven’t moved from the photo for at least an hour. He stares down at it, searching for the answers that he didn’t see the first time around because he was too busy reeling from the shock of somebody _seeing_ him.

Nothing comes to him.

 

***

Benny gets up to make coffee, and offers Dean a cup.

Dean accepts graciously, despite it tasting how it looks; like gritty brown water.

Nothing comes to him.

 

***

 

“Don’t you think we should call it a night Dean? We’ve been staring at nothing for hours – “ Dean shuts out Benny’s soft cajoling voice, fading it to white noise. He needs to concentrate.

He scans over the photograph, eyes checking every detail for the thousandth time, looking for something, _anything_ that could give him any ideas on where or who the Vigilante is. Dean would take literally _anything_ – no matter how big or small – to give him an edge over his colleagues in the search to find his comrade. He flips it over again, checking the back once more.

This time though, the light from his desk lamp catches just right, gleaming off the shine and he finally – fucking _finally_ – sees it.

Something that looks like ‘3’ is written in either clear varnish or, or, or…

A UV marker pen.

He’s up and out of his chair, grabbing the nearest black light, which just so happens to be beyond the door of Harry and Ed’s lab. Thankfully, he now knows that they cut out early on Tuesdays to go ghost hunting, so he’s in and out and back in his seat within a couple of minutes, relatively unscarred, though he did catch a glimpse of what looked like wookie porn when he nudged the computer mouse by accident and got an eyeful of the more-than-slightly-disturbing-screensaver.

He shuts off his light – the only one still illuminating the room – and flicks on the UV, shining it over the back of the Polaroid.

**_33829-118352_ **

_What the fuck?_

He stares for a few minutes, only tearing his attention away when he hears the elevator doors opening, and then Benny is there, low thud of his footsteps on the carpet, apparently returned from his coffee run to the Starbucks down the street.

He sets the second cup down on Dean’s desk and tilts his head thoughtfully, squinting down at the numbers.

“You found something?”

At Dean’s barely-there grunt, he continues.

“Maybe it’s some kind of organizational thing?” He suggests. “Y’know, like a collector might have. This could be his way of cataloguing the photos he takes of cars? Not my idea of fun, but each to their own.”

It’s an excellent theory – undoubtedly wrong – but Benny isn’t working with all of the facts like Dean is. His partner is still working under the assumption that the photo is Davies’.

Of course, Dean knows better.

 

***

 

“I’m gonna get going.” Benny murmurs – what feels like – a few seconds later, but when Dean looks up at the clock, another 45 minutes has passed. “Andrea will have my head if I’m not home soon.”

“Sure,” Dean replies, with a smile that he suspects in bordering on hysterical, but then he’s straight back down to it. He has to figure this out.

He’s vaguely mindful of Benny packing up his things, grabbing his jacket and leaving, but he still doesn’t look away, scared that the numbers may morph into something else if he takes his eyes off them.

He glares at the numbers for what seems like days – probably is – rearranging them, trying to make sense of them. Not a zipcode or phone number, not in L.A. anyway.

_What the fuck do they mean?_

There’s no way that the Vigilante wouldn’t have taken the time out to write the numbers on the back if they were meaningless.

_Maybe the hyphen is a minus?_

_33829_

_–_

_118352_

Nope, makes even less sense than before. If that’s possible at this stage.

His dad would probably be yelling at him right now, about how he can’t even make sense of a bunch of numbers and what kind of cop is he and how he’d never make it in the military –

The military.

Something Dean heard when he wasn’t even listening scratches at the edges of his consciousness, gnawing at him. He reaches for it, grasping and coming up with nothing time and time again until he’s a ball of frustration; tired, hungry and pissed off at his dad for letting him down once again.

A memory that’s got to be nearly twenty years old, relating to his Dad talking about the dangers of being in a hot zone finds its way to Dean in the form of a fragmented conversation.

“…dangerous place, we’d write coordinates…wall, scrap of paper…find…”

_Holy fuck. Holy fucking Hell._

He grabs the pen and rearranges the numbers once again.

_33.829_

_\- 118.352_

He’s not sure if that’s correct, but he’ll keep trying until he gets it right.

He quickly brings up the internet on his phone – not risking using a department computer – and types the numbers in, fingers trembling with either excitement or lack of food; he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, just wants to find something, _has_ to find something –

_Longitude: 33.829_

_Latitude: - 118.352_

**_Hawthorne Boulevard, Los Angeles._ **

The Vigilante may not be pointing the whole of the LAPD where to go, but he apparently has no qualms about helping Dean out.

_Holy fucking Hell indeed._


	8. Chapter Seven - You are my savior in my time of need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some may recognise John Winchester's quote as being lifted from Top Dollar in The Crow. It's a favourite of mine and I can totally imagine this 'verses John saying it to a young Dean.  
> Anyways, slightly shorter chapter, but I have the next one halfway complete, so there shouldn't be much of a wait to kind of make up for it!
> 
> As always, thank you for the awesome comments and stuff :D

Of course, it’s just Dean’s luck that when he’s just about ready for the most important moment of his life, something inevitably goes wrong.

He’s fumbling with his phone, raising it to his ear as he shoves his key into the ignition, but doesn’t turn it yet, “Sammy, what is it?”

“Where the fuck are you?” His brother sounds more pissed than Dean’s heard in a long time.

“At the station. Why?”

“Jesus fucking Christ Dean. It’s the damn rehearsal dinner tonight. Cas is about ready to straight up murder you and I’m not far behind.”

Dean manages to suppress the hysterical laughter that threatens to bubble up from his throat at Sammy’s poor choice of words; instead it comes out as a mangled whimper.

Yeah, he’s probably a little strung out from staring at numbers for – he glances at the glowing numbers of the LED clock above the radio – almost 14 hours.

“Why didn’t you phone me earlier?” Which is definitely the wrong thing to say, judging by Sam’s disgusted scoff.

“Because I was fucking busy, Dean! Y’know with Jess’s parents; the people who are gonna become our family in a couple of days? I had to lie and say that you were sick, because it was better than telling them the truth; that my brother and best man couldn’t be bothered to turn up! And why? Let me guess? Something to do with this fucking Vigilante case that you’ve been obsessing over?”

Dean clears his throat and wills himself to focus. He has to get to Hawthorne Boulevard – which is a ridiculously long fucking road, _of course_ – and start his search for the Vigilante. He’s not sleeping or quitting until he finds what he’s looking for; what he’s spent his whole life looking for.

First thing’s first; he needs to placate his brother and boyfriend, and if that means sharing a sliver of the truth when he really doesn’t want to, then so be it, “Look, Sammy I found a lead and I had to follow up.”

The only response Dean gets is in the form of a harshly muttered _‘fucks sake’_ then a terse pause, finally ending with Cas’s muffled voice asking, “ _Where is he Sam?”_ The next thing he hears are sounds of movement and rustling, as the phone is apparently switched hands. He can just about hear Sam’s voice, but not the words.

“That true?” Cas suddenly sounds loud and clear. “Did you miss your brother’s rehearsal dinner for a _fucking case_?” The last two words are almost spat out and Dean baulks from the phone; from the pure venom in his boyfriend’s tone.

“Woah, Cas –“

“No. You listen to me Dean Winchester. Unless you think that you have somewhere better to be, you get your ass home right the fuck now.”

He’s gotta go for broke. He can lie his way out of it later and say that he was wrong; that the Vigilante wasn’t there, even if he was, because he needs his family to understand how important this is; they have to see it for the ground-breaking discovery it is, even if it will mean something different to them. He’s gotta tell the truth; the truth will set him free.

“Look babe, I really think I’m onto something here.” He pauses for effect, “I might have found where the Vigilante is doing his killing.”

There’s a pregnant silence where Dean can hear nothing over the sound of his own heart pounding in his chest, beating a fast staccato rhythm.

When Cas finally speaks, his voice is cold, detached, “Well, then I guess you need to decide what’s more important to you.”

In the next second Dean hears the dialing tone and he slams his free hand against the steering wheel in a fit of impotent rage.

***

As much as he cares for Cas; as much as he wishes that he could be content to live his life out with him, he’s just _not_ and all the vague hoping in the world won’t change it. He can’t go back to a normal life knowing that his potential fucking soul mate is out there.

The person who coined the phrase, “Ignorance is bliss,” wasn’t kidding.

Though, really, would he take not knowing over the risk of finally meeting someone he can be himself with?

He won’t be able to answer that until he meets the Vigilante, but he can’t imagine ever wanting to be ignorant about something as life-changing as this.

His choice was made weeks ago, and now regardless of Cas’s sort-of-ultimatum, that decision – and the reasons behind it – hasn’t changed.

Which is why instead of driving home to his wonderful, innocent boyfriend and safe life, he gets in his car, peels out of the lot and finds himself heading towards the Vigilante and the uncertainty that he brings.

***

 

Hawthorne Boulevard, also known as County Route N7, is well over twenty miles long. Which, under normal circumstances would be a real shitter because it’s the height of summer; the sun is rising just before six, giving him less than six hours to search.

However, due to the combined foresight of the Vigilante and the wonders of modern technology in the form of Google Maps, he’s been able to find the exact location.

Dean suppresses a grin; the coordinates have pointed him to a destitute warehouse, about half a mile from the partially (mostly) dead Hawthorne Plaza; a place that is so Scooby-Doo that he can’t help himself.

His good cheer fades as he realizes that this is _it_. Even if he doesn’t meet the Vigilante tonight, nothing will ever be the same again.

He’s suddenly struck with an attack of serious nerves. This is monumental; life-altering. He can’t just wade in and hope for the best. He needs to seriously think about this; think about what it means for his family, his job, _Cas_.

Goddammit, he’d been so sure back at the station, but now standing with the decision in front of him, he’s completely uncertain of what to do.

It’s not too late to go home to Cas.

Back when he was ten, his father took him out shooting in the forest behind their motel room, whilst Sammy was looked after by one of the maids in need of some extra cash. Dean had been wary at first; not wanting to leave his kid brother in the hands of a stranger, but their dad was insistent, and Dean caved, figuring that the sooner he did as he was told, the sooner he could be with Sam again.

As it turned out, he actually had fun, shooting at the carefully laid out cans with a natural knack and accuracy that only grew stronger as the day progressed.

It was only after Dean happened to glance at his watch and notice that they’d been gone for nearly five hours that his dad came over and squeezed him on the shoulder, not full of praise for Dean or worry for Sammy, but instead, cryptic words that would mean nothing to Dean until he was much older.

“Son, childhood is over the moment you know that you’re gonna die.”

He used to believe that their dad had some semblance of moral fiber; after all he was a cop for fucks sake; sworn to uphold the law and protect people – the stuff heroes were made of. It didn’t really count for much though, not when he would drag his two sons all over the country, jumping from precinct to precinct, city to city in the hopes of tracking down his wife’s murderer.

When that failed, fueled by the futility of the situation and the life he had built for himself, he began working on Dean, pulling him out of school for ‘family emergencies’ which usually consisted of combat training or some kind of briefing on the latest bastard acquitted of a crime they were almost certainly guilty of.

Dean didn’t know that he was being trained as John Winchester’s very own monster until it was too late.

That day in the forest, shooting holes in the cans with his dads Colt M1911 (always the military name, never the civvy version; Colt .45) was just the beginning. It was the first and last time that Dean ever felt like a kid and although he wouldn’t kill anyone for another four years, it was the first major turning point in his life; one that he had absolutely no control over.

This one though, he does.

For the first time in his life, _Dean_ gets a say; _he_ gets to choose what _he_ wants.

Question is: is this what he wants?

The answer comes easily.

All he has ever wanted is to not be who he is. He wants to be the person he would have been if his dad had let him keep his childhood; let him read comics and build treehouses and skateboard.

But that’s not possible, because it’s gone and he’s never mourned it, so he’s not gonna start now.

He needs to focus on the present.

His choice is broken down into two very simple options:

He can walk away, carry on as he has been; stay with Cas, watch Sammy get married, keep his job as a cop, never knowing how it feels to be truly accepted, to be actually _seen_ for what he is, reasonably content with a stable and tranquil life, lived out in the suburbs of L.A with a boyfriend and brother who love him.

Or

He can walk inside the warehouse, meet another one of his kind; his potential soul mate and know how it feels to be understood, but in doing so, risking everything he’s worked so hard for, everything he continues to work to keep.

It’s not a decision that he should be making in the parking lot of a warehouse on the back of a 16-hour shift, too tired to focus on anything other than the vague throbbing starting up just behind his left temple.

He has to make the choice simpler.

_‘…you need to decide what’s more important to you’._

Peace…or freedom?

 

 

 

***

Dean chooses freedom. He’s had peace.

It doesn’t suit him.

***

 

 

 

He’s not really sure what to expect from the derelict building, seeing as he doesn’t know what to expect from the Vigilante himself, but it’s definitely not _this_.

The place is dark, gritty and smells of damp and the clinging stench of marijuana. It’s not somewhere that Dean himself would choose to kill rapists and pedophiles, but then again, it might be one of many places that the Vigilante uses.

He flicks on the flashlight he’d grabbed out of the trunk as an afterthought. Luckily, the batteries are still working and it flickers into life, beam sweeping over the concrete floor, as Dean searches the main level of the warehouse. He keeps close the walls, careful about where he places his feet, not wanting to create too much noise.

It’s not until he sees a mass, covered in something that catches the light, by the emergency exit leading out to the rear of the building that he’s even sure he’s in the right place.

He’s seen too many dead bodies for it to be mistaken for anything else.

Dean moves quickly and efficiently, dropping down onto his haunches and pulls back the tarp with fingers that probably should be shaking, but ‘squeamish’ isn’t really on the credentials of a good serial killer _or_ cop, and he isn’t even slightly surprised to see the body inside.

It’s Charles Bain; throat slit and ready for dumping at the Basin.

_The Vigilante is here._

As if on cue, Dean hears a heavy clank, thud and then there are footsteps up on the metal gantry way above him.

Dean rises to his feet, eyes tracing the echoing sound off the stairs as the owner descends. It’s too dark to see anything other than a silhouette, and Dean daren’t move the beam of his flashlight; he’s waited a lifetime, he can cope for another few seconds.

The echo changes to a dull thud and the sound of grit being crunched underfoot, signaling that the person is on the concrete level with Dean.

Seconds turn into what feels like an eternity as he waits, standing completely still, staring at darkness, waiting for the single most important person in his life to emerge.

He’s heard all of the clichés about how it’s always the person you least suspect – John Glover, the Granny Killer, was a volunteer at the Senior Citizens Society for fuck’s sake – but seriously, it’s for a fucking reason, because the person who steps out of the shadows and into the pale yellow strip of light is quite literally the last person in the fucking universe that Dean would have suspected.

.

.

.

“Hello Dean.”


	9. Chapter Eight - An honest statement...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without further ado ('cause I get the impression that there may be some explosions if I don't update soon) here is the next chapter :).

“Hello Dean.”

It can’t be. He’s stepped into some alternate universe where the villain is always the one you never pegged for it; not because they’re the least suspicious, but because there’s just _no way_. The reasoning is so wacky that nothing like that could ever happen in the real world.

Except it is happening. It’s happening to Dean and he’d be laughing if it weren’t so goddamn crazy.

He stands a couple of inches shorter than Dean, still in his smart shirt and pants after Sammy’s rehearsal dinner. He looks good; like a public defender or some shit. Which is all kinds of ironic.

“I know what you’re thinking.” He says, like he might actually have a fucking clue. “Well, maybe not exactly, but I can guess a close approximation.”

Dean’s mind is still stuck on a loop, cycling through years of interactions in seconds, frantically rewinding through every conversation they’ve ever had, every smile, every stupid fight...

_'That boy is Satan in a Sunday hat.'_

“Cas.”

His boyfriend looks slightly sheepish as his gaze shifts over to the dead body – _the body he created_ – and back to Dean again, “Yeah.”

Dean isn’t sure where to start. Is there even a place to start? How do you have a conversation with somebody who makes the nicest, softest whole-wheat bread in the world, but who has also used those hands to stab someone in just the right places so that they bled to death slowly and painfully?

He goes with his gut reaction.

“What the actual _fuck_?”

Castiel looks genuinely surprised by the outburst, as if he was expecting  - or probably more accurately, hoping  for – a completely different response.  

_Yeah, well, expect away, Castiel._

Beyond that, there’s only one other question that Dean needs to hear the answer to right now. It feels like time stops and he’s watching this whole scene happening from somewhere very far away; he can disconnect, it’s something he’s gotten good at over the years.

He tries his best to keep his voice neutral, but it sounds hoarse and alien to his own ears. “It’s you, you’re the Basin Vigilante?”

Castiel – he can’t bring himself to call the man in front of him Cas right now. This isn’t _his_ Cas, even if it walks, talks and looks like him – quirks a small, slightly frustrated smile.  “Yes. Though I still think that it’s a stupid fucking appellation.”

Dean can’t think. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

Everything they have shared together. Everything was bullshit. He gets how hypocritical it is for him to be angry about Castiel lying about who he is, but there’s not a whole lot of room for rationality in this situation taken straight out of the top-ten-things-you-don’t-want-to-find-out-about-your-spouse handbook.

This moment was supposed to one of immense joy, but instead, he’s angry. Angry with himself for not seeing it; angry with Castiel for knowing all this time without saying a damn word.

“Say something,” Castiel’s voice sounds small in the warehouse; not even loud enough to create an echo and even in the partial light from the flashlight still in Dean’s grip, he can see Cas’s hopeless expression, the uncertainty that’s making every muscle in his body taut, just waiting to hear what Dean thinks.

And then the words come. But he knows even before he says them that they’re the wrong ones; not the ones he really wants to say, nor the ones that Cas wants to hear.

“I was just on the damn phone with you! At no point during the conversation – or Hell, the last two fucking years – did you think to tell me that you’re the guy half of Los Angeles is searching for? I mean, I just can’t…” He flounders, searching in vain for some way to make sense of everything, scouring his mind for some fucking way to deal with this. “Tell me something; what were you going to do if somebody else worked out your Krypton Factor bullshit before me, huh?”

Castiel lets the words sink in, lets the disappointment wash over him, and then it’s gone; the mask is back and he shrugs nonchalantly as if they’re discussing the weather or something equally inane as opposed to the discovery of him being L.A’s most wanted. “It was never going to be anybody else, Dean. I left the messages just for you. And you worked it all out, just like I knew you would.”

_‘They have their best cop on the case after all.’_

“The lessons? They were for me?”

Castiel smiles kindly, regretfully, looking every bit as sincere as Benny. _How the fuck does he do that?_  “Never a lesson; always a test. Right up until tonight. I gave you a choice back there. You could have turned away from all this; come home to me, but you didn’t. You chose what you are over who society thinks you should be. You pursued this. There was ample opportunity for you to turn back.”

_‘Well, then I guess you need to decide what’s more important to you.’_

The phrase, ‘holy fucking shit’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“Well they turned out to be the same thing in the end.” Dean doesn’t even try to keep the derision out of his voice. It’s petty and totally unnecessary, but it’s all he’s got at this stage. “So either way, we would have ended up in this situation eventually.”

“Not the same thing at all.”

Castiel doesn’t bother elaborating and Dean doesn’t bother asking.

“How did you know who – _what_ I was?”

“As soon as I met you, I suspected –”

Dean cuts him off, hand raised, tired and angry, “You _suspected_?”

He tilts his head in that baby-bird-adorable way he always does. But now it looks wrong; completely off-kilter. “You’re an honorable man, Dean, practically burning with morality and righteousness. But you’re so filled with self-loathing.”

“How do you make the jump from emo to serial killer?”

Castiel smiles ruefully, looking vulnerable again. “I believe the phrase is, ‘takes one to know one’.”

 “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Castiel looks at him, really looks, like he did at Sam’s barbecue, searching for something, as if he can read Dean’s mind if he stares hard enough. “Do you really wish I was?”

Dean thinks long and hard about that.

At first, he’s not sure how to answer. All his knowledge of Castiel is built around the persona that he created for himself. It’s not who Castiel really is, so it’s a stranger standing in front of Dean, telling him that he kills people who deserve it, hidden behind a veneer of someone who bakes and hums when he does washing up, even though he fucking hates it.

Except it’s not a stranger at all.

It’s still **_Cas_**. With his stupidly messy hair and beautiful blue eyes. It’s still Cas with his smile that made Dean doubt this. Because really, it hadn’t been anything else. Sure, Dean loves Sammy – will do until his dying day, no matter what – but he has Jess now, and his job is important, but not enough for him to walk away from a true chance at happiness in the form of his soul mate.

No, the thing that made him pause outside and stand there thinking about whether he wanted this was the idea of leaving Cas behind.

And now, that isn’t even an option, because Cas isn’t getting left behind. Cas is way ahead, waiting on _Dean_ to hurry the fuck up and get with the program.

“No.” He says slowly, “I don’t.”

He sees the tension drain from Cas’s body, almost folding in on himself, like he’d just been waiting for rejection, and it’s then that Dean realizes Cas is more like him than he’d ever imagined; insecure, scared, lonely… how much it must have taken for him to do this, to trust Dean with a part of himself that he probably doesn’t fully understand, to take that leap of faith with another person who is just as likely to turn their back and leave him destroyed.

He gets it.

“How do you cope with it all? Don’t you hate what you are?”

“I have my off days,” Cas concedes with a small shrug. “Like, today I’m seriously doubting myself.” He gives a small awkward laugh, looking every inch the innocent darling Dean has always seen him as. “The cops should be on their way by now, so there’s that.”

Dean baulks, panic clawing at his chest. “What? Why would you do that?” He’s already frantically formulating a coherent web of lies for why he and Cas are in a warehouse with a dead Vigilante victim; figuring out some way to bullshit their way out of the situation. It wouldn’t be hard and –

And it’s in that precise moment that he realizes that no matter what, he’s protecting Cas. A decision that he didn’t even need to think about, agonize over. Right now, it doesn’t matter how pissed off or confused he is, or even what happens between them after tonight; the overwhelming urge to protect Cas is prevalent. It just feels natural; like there isn’t even another alternative.

“I didn’t know if you were going to accept _me_ , accept _this_!” Cas says in a sudden – unusual – burst of emotion, arms spread wide, _completely open._ The lack of constraint reminds Dean of when Cas was drunk at Sam’s bachelor party. “I still don’t. Just because we’re the same… it doesn’t mean jack shit.”

_‘Two peas in a pod.’_

A thought suddenly occurs to him; a question he’s been dying to ask for the last week or so. The burning need to know outweighs any residual concern about the imminent arrival of his fellow cops. “And the getting drunk thing? What was all that about? You can’t tell me that it wasn't intentional, that you just randomly drank too much, because I won’t believe you.”

Cas sighs sadly, looking so fragile, mere inches away from breaking into a million pieces. “I was seriously at war with myself. Doubting whether I’d done the right thing in exposing myself like that; showing myself to you. That’s why the next body was a few days old. I’d deliberated for a while.”

Silence falls over them both, and Cas’s voice is soft when he speaks again. “I can’t do this any longer, Dean. If someone who’s like me can’t accept me, then what hope do I have for anyone else? And I refuse to hide anymore. If you don’t want this – me – then either shoot me now or wait for the cops to show up and let them arrest me. I’ll go easy and I’ll ask for the death penalty.”

The confession hits Dean like a bullet between the eyes; sure, he’s had his moments where he wants to turn himself in, just for the relief not having to keep up the façade, but Cas looks so _resigned_ to it. Even though Dean is slowly coming to terms with it all, it’s like Cas is waiting for Dean to tell him the punch line that involves him getting abandoned and dying by way of lethal injection in a Californian jail.

Dean closes his eyes against Cas’s words; painful to hear. “Why didn’t you just _tell_ me?”

“At first I was content with the cover thing, it worked for me and I didn’t need anything else. I’ve never really had much of a desire to partner up. With you off doing your thing, you’d never notice my absences.” He smiles wistfully. “It was kind of perfect actually. Then, I started actually falling for you, and soon it just wasn’t enough. I wanted – no _needed_ – you to look at me in the way you did the first time we had sex.” He pauses, looks up at Dean through his eyelashes. “That’s when I knew by the way.”

_‘I liked being able to really **see** you… I miss it’_

So Dean wasn’t wrong about that. But the reason he’d seen his true self reflected in Cas’s eyes was because Cas was – is – just like him. It was never a reflection of himself; it was his mirror image in the form of Cas.

Dean swallows hard. How can he have been so ignorant all this time? The sting of betrayal – ridiculous as it may be – gives way to embarrassment. He’s a fucking detective for Christ’s sake and he didn’t know that there was a serial killer under his nose?

_‘He’s been wound so tight recently and you don’t seem to notice’_

_‘What’s it going to take for you to notice me, Dean?’_

_‘…because you’ve been paying **such** close attention, right?’_

Fuck. It was all right there.

As if Cas knows what he’s thinking, he says, “If it’s any consolation, I’m very good at hiding.”

Understatement. Especially with Cas’s _apparent_ serious faith in the justice system.

Which makes even less sense in light of recent revelations.

“So your whole, ‘criminals should be in jail, no matter how badly they deserve a knife to the chest’ speech was bullshit?”

Castiel shifts his weight uncomfortably, taking a deep breath, “Yes and no. You asked me about my self-loathing days? Well I wasn’t so good at hiding those. As you know, this line of work is lonely and with nobody to tell you what’s right and wrong, sometimes the lines get blurred. Some days I was desperate to atone for my sins.”

_‘He needs to be brought to justice as quickly as possible. Before he does any more damage.’_

Holy shit.

Something must show on Dean’s face, because Cas adds with a wry smile and fake nonchalance, “A very strict religious upbringing does wonders for fucking with your moral compass.”

“As much as a father who trained you, then killed himself when he couldn’t bear to look at his creation?”

Cas winces in sympathy. “Touché. You win.”

They share a tentative smile and a consolatory silence for childhoods lost.

_Finally. Someone who understands._

Despite everything, it’s still a relief.

The sound of sirens approaching in the distance is an unwelcome intrusion and Dean is reminded once again of how this was kind of a do-or-die mission for Cas that hinged on Dean’s decision.

He steps forward, slides a hand around the back of Cas’s neck, through the hair there and presses his lips to his boyfriend’s forehead in a tender protective gesture. “You need to get out of here. I’ll handle it.”

“I’ll see you at home?” He doesn’t miss the hesitant, hopeful note held in Cas’s words, as if he still can’t believe that Dean is okay with this, okay with him.

Dean can’t quite believe it himself; all this time he’s had someone who is just like him who accepts him and wants him. He understands Cas’s reservations completely.

“Dean?” There’s a quiet desperation in his eyes.

“Yeah,” He nods, managing a faint smile, “See you at home. I’ll try to get away as quickly as I can.”

 

***

 

When the cops bulldoze their way in with Benny at the helm, Dean is crouched over the body, immediately gesturing for the several officers accompanying his partner to come over to him.

Seconds later Benny is behind and above him, boots crunching the grit underfoot, staring down at the latest Vigilante body.

“Dean?”

It takes a few seconds for Dean to realize he’s being spoken to, still so caught up in thoughts about Cas and what the fuck they’re gonna do now. He turns and looks up at the serious face of his friend and colleague. “Uh, sorry Benny. Hey,”

Benny’s frown deepens. “How’d you get here so quickly, brother?”

Dean coughs, throat catching on the lie. “I was in the area, caught it on the scanner.”

Benny nods, expression still caught somewhere between worry and mild unease. “You should have waited for us though. Could have been dangerous Dean.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t wanna miss any opportunity to catch this guy, you know.”

“I understand, but if he had been here, what then?”

_Well I would have found out that it’s my boyfriend of two years, we would have argued, discovered that we both have the same issues, agreed to help him evade the law and sent him home, to be continued A.S.A.P._

Of course, none of that is said aloud. Instead he says, “I know it was stupid, but I would never forgive myself if I’d waited and he’d got away because I followed bullshit protocol.” He throws out his best impersonation of a warm smile. “How come you’re here though? Surely you could have let the uniforms deal with it?”

“It’s our case.” Benny replies solemnly, as if it explains everything. Which, it kinda does. “I couldn’t sleep anyway. Kept wondering what we were missing, couldn’t shake those damn numbers from my mind.”

“Okay,” Dean replies quickly, keen not to over-analyze anything that could bring Benny closer to the actual truth. He turns his attention back to the body. “Well, it looks like one Charles Bain. Definitely been here a few days. Probably killed the same day he disappeared…”

_‘That’s why the next body was a few days old. I’d deliberated for a while.’_

“How do we think he died?”

“Beaten to death. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it was with a tire iron.”

Benny makes a sound of disgust. “Anything on the body like last time, you know, anything to point us in the right direction with the next one?”

Dean already knows the answer without checking, but he pulls on a pair of proffered gloves from Benny and checks the pockets, patting down the clothing.

Just as he suspected. “Nope, not this time.” He doesn’t doubt that Cas had something planned out for when he dumped the body, but obviously Dean turning up had caused a slight hiccup in Cas’s schedule.

“Well, we’ve evidently burst in on his little slaughter house, so he was probably going to do it before he took this one to the Basin.”

Dean makes a vague noise of assent. Cas will have to find somewhere else to work now. Or maybe he can come and work with Dean? He could always use an extra pair of hands and he has the distinct advantage that nobody – besides Cas of course – even knows that his incarnation of a serial killer exists.

Which actually raises the question of why Cas suddenly decided to make his kills obvious. They’re only traceable back as far as six months – Dean checked earlier cold cases, but nothing – and it’s obvious that Cas has been killing for far longer than that. So why come out of the shadows when he did?

_‘Then, I started actually falling for you, and soon it just wasn’t enough’_

Holy shit, Cas _literally_ did it for Dean. To catch his attention in the hopes that Dean would be interested enough to pursue. So that he –

“Dean, you okay brother? You’re kind of spacing out on me there.”

_Fuck. Still at a crime scene. Focus._

He yawns, hoping that Benny will catch the not-so-subtle-hint. “Yeah, just kind of bummed out that we got this close to the Vigilante and didn’t catch him.” The words sound foreign to his brain, but apparently not to Benny, because he claps him on the shoulder and flashes a sympathetic smile.

“I know Dean, but nobody can say that it’s not because of you. You’ve really been on the ball with the case so far. Maybe you should go home, get some sleep. I doubt the bastard is going anywhere.”

For the second time in one night, Dean bites back a hysterical laugh.

_If only you knew._

He rises to his feet and pulls the gloves off, handing them back to his colleague. “Thanks Benny.”

As Dean walks across the concrete floor on shaky legs – could be lack of sleep, lack of food or the whole my-boyfriend-is-a-serial-killer-like-me thing – he hears Benny’s voice call out behind him, “Just get some fuckin’ sleep!”

Yeah right. As if that’s gonna be happening any time soon.

 


	10. Chapter Nine - ... But actions speak louder than words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this. I really do appreciate it.  
> Final chapter, so it's porn time!

The metallic scrape of the key in the lock seems too noisy in the quiet of dawn, the only other sounds the intermittent chirps and buzzes of nature. As soon as the door swings inwards, he’s greeted with the sight of Cas, standing there, eyes wide, having changed out of his smart stuff and into his pajama pants and nothing else.

It would be more than a little distracting if he wasn’t almost curled in on himself, looking so small, doe-eyed and innocent, like a kid waiting to be lectured, and Dean has to remind himself over and over that this man has killed people.

Brutally. Like the scumbag at the warehouse, beaten to death with a tire iron.

_‘Satan in a Sunday hat.’_

Dean had thought he was the definition of that phrase, but compared to Cas, he’s small-time.

He throws his keys into the ugly glass fruit bowl on the sideboard, like normal.

But nothing about this situation is normal.

“I would say that the innocent look doesn’t suit you Cas, but we both know I’d be lying.”

Cas flinches a little at Dean’s tone, then spreads his hands in a supplicatory gesture, trying to appear harmless, but now Dean knows that he’s anything but. “I’m not sure what you want me to say Dean. If you need to me to leave –”

Panic swells and breaks inside Dean. No, he doesn’t want to Cas to leave. “No.”

Something unreadable flickers across Cas’s face, and if Dean wants this to work, he’s going to have to start paying attention to the little nuances in Cas’s expression. Maybe he should ask Sammy for studying tips. Or buy some kind of cue cards.

Dean boots the front door closed behind him and crosses the distance between them, stepping too far into Cas’s space, but he needs to look him in the eyes, needs to really look and _see_. “Do you love me?” He asks, and if his voice sounds slightly strained, then he’ll deny it to his dying day.

Cas’s expression turns serious, eyes hard and determined, but still imploring. “Dean, whatever your father taught you. Whatever he said. Fucking forget it, because he was wrong. You’re amazing. You’re _my_ Dean, _my_ righteous man and I love you for exactly _what_ and _who_ you are.”

The passionate reverence in Castiel’s words stirs something in Dean’s chest akin to longing. Longing for things that he never thought he’d have and now he’s standing here facing someone who is willing to give him _everything_. Who sees him and still wants him. It’s something that his father had told him would never ever happen, because he was broken, flawed, an aberration.

But maybe Cas is right; he needs to forget it, believe that his dad was wrong, because Cas is standing in front of him needing the same thing that Dean does, so maybe they can be broken, flawed aberrations together.

Together. It’s a word that means something to everyone else, but not Dean. Not until now at least. Now it sounds so much better than its antonym; alone.

“I love you too Cas.” And it’s not just empty words to satisfy some kind of verbal obligation any more, it’s really real, the whole heart skipping a beat thing and rainbows and sugar-coated candies. How could he not love somebody like Cas? Somebody who is like Dean, but so _not_ at the same time.

He’d driven around after leaving the crime scene – Cas’s scene –  knowing that he was making Cas worry and wait, but it had given him time to actually think about things and what the fuck to do. Obviously turning Cas in wasn’t an option. Neither was pushing him away. So really that only left the one route. One Dean was surprisingly okay with, despite his predilection for working alone.

Cas’s face breaks out into a tentative, but breathtaking smile. “You think we can do this?”

“I don’t know,” He admits openly, “but if anything is worth an uphill climb, it’s this.” He gestures between them. “I want us to work Cas. I don’t wanna hide anymore, not from each other at least.”

He’s barely got the words out, before Cas is on him, threading his hands through Dean’s hair and tugging, lips colliding, mouths fusing together and it’s so good to feel Cas like this, plastered to him like a second skin, lithe muscles and body warm and hard against him, hands roaming over each with a desperation like they’ve just crossed the Sahara and this is their first taste of water.

A traitorous voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he doesn’t deserve any of this, he’s John Winchesters blunt instrument; a tool useful for one thing only. He’s not _allowed_ this.

“Dean,” Cas grates. “Stop it. I know what you’re thinking.”

Heat crackles along Dean’s veins at Cas’s commanding, harsh tone; deeper than usual and so hot that Dean’s thoughts take a determined drive into the gutter.

He turns them sharply and shoves Cas into the nearest wall, worrying momentarily in the wake of it in case he’s hurt him, but when Dean goes to pull away to ask, Cas growls low in his throat and bites down on Dean’s lower lip.

Fuck yeah. Manhandling Cas is a novelty that won’t be wearing off anytime soon.

Cas makes a strangled noise as Dean yanks his pajama pants down, stepping out of them and kicking them away, before he goes to work on his own slacks, letting them fall to his ankles, puddling around his feet, as soon as he’s done with the button and zipper, boxer-briefs going with them. “God Dean… so many times I wanted to tell you…”

Dean’s hands slide down over Cas’s naked hips, palms smoothing possessively over his ass, making Cas gasp and tense as Dean pulls him upwards, urging him to lift himself off the ground. Cas catches on quickly, jumping and wrapping his legs around Dean’s waist, his back braced against the wall.

Their lips find each other again, and they begin grinding against one another, cocks sliding bare, dragging, rutting like a pair of horny teenagers, but Dean doesn’t care – can’t find it in himself to care – because he has everything he wants now and it’s so much better than he could have ever imagined.

“Cas…”

“Yeah?” Cas pulls back, brows knitted together, eyes clouded with worry and it breaks Dean’s heart a little that somewhere in Cas’s mind, he’s still waiting for Dean to tell him that this isn’t real.

Dean wants to allay that concern as soon as humanly possible. “In the spirit of us being totally honest with one another, I just want you to know that I fucking _hate_ salads.”

Cas’s handsome face smoothes out into a bright grin and in that moment there is literally nothing else Dean wants to see for the rest of his life. “Me too. Cheeseburgers all the way.”

For the first time in forever, Dean allows himself to embrace the happiness that engulfs him, warm and tight; this is everything he’s ever wanted; acceptance, love, safety. And to find out that he had it all along in the form of someone as beautiful as Cas? He’s so unbelievably lucky and fucking _grateful_ to have found someone as goddamn amazing as Castiel.

None of that comes out of his mouth though, none of it even formulates into words he could ever hope express in a manner eloquent enough to do the way he feels justice, so instead he presses his body closer to Cas’s and captures his lips in a bruising, desperate kiss that he hopes says everything he can’t.

It doesn’t feel wrong at all; it feels like the purest high, crystal in its clarity. Like a deep breath Dean hadn’t realized he was waiting to take.

Like he’s been living in a world of muted colors, filtered before they reach his eyes.

“Want you Dean… want all… of you.” Cas pants against Dean’s mouth, all desperation and need as his fingers pop the buttons of Dean’s work shirt; the only item of clothing still between them and complete nakedness – in every sense of the word, “Please… let me have you.”

And it’s not like Dean can really say no at this point. He craves the intimacy that he’s never been able to initiate before, wants to be inside Cas in every way possible; this is just the first step to achieving what he’s always been told is out of reach for him.

Cas’s hands are on his bare chest, greedy and reverential at the same time, brushing over his collarbone, his nipples, his stomach. Dean whines when Cas deliberately avoids touching his cock – so hard it’s verging on painful – with a teasing smirk playing on his lips.

Oh, this is so much better than Dean could have ever imagined.

Dean slips his hand from its position on Cas’s thigh and slowly moves towards his hole, fingers rubbing up and down the cleft, enjoying Cas’s breathy moans, and he’s totally not returning the favor of being a tease, no, not at all.

When his fingertips encounter wetness, Dean groans, unable to stop. Cas has prepped himself.

“I was hopeful,” Cas admits, breath hot and heavy in the hollow of Dean’s collarbone, sucking a bruise into the skin there, wriggling his hips in Dean’s grasp, a silent plea.

The image of Cas moaning wantonly around three fingers up his ass, is so incongruous with who Dean thought his boyfriend was that it steals his breath away.

It’s hot in so many fucking ways that he’s not even sure he can count that high.

“Hopeful, huh?” Dean murmurs, kissing Cas, drawing a needy moan from him as he lines his cock up with Cas’s slick hole.

They’ve never done it without the barrier of latex, despite their relationship being a monogamous one, but now it seems more than a little redundant, so Dean slides himself inch-by-inch into the tight heat, pushing and stretching and it feels so good that he can hardly believe that he’s missed out on two years of _this_.

Apparently Cas feels the same, because he bites out a harsh “fuck,” on a broken moan, his mouth slack as he tilts his head back, hitting the wall, but he doesn’t seem to care about the pain, because his hips are shoving, grinding down against Dean, trying to take him as deep as possible.

Dean’s whole body feels so alive with pleasure; every nerve ending rewired and sparking, as he thrusts in fast, slides out leisurely, Cas’s inner muscles clutching at his cock like they don’t want to let go and if he whimpers, then there’s nobody to hear it, other than Cas, and he’s too far gone; making embarrassing noises of his own every time Dean angles his hips just right and slams in deep.

Dean’s fingers dig into the firm skin of Cas’s thighs hard enough to bruise, but it doesn’t stop Cas from pushing back onto him harder, faster, begging for more, deeper. Right now, he looks the very picture of debauched innocence; plush lips swollen and kiss-bitten, flush of color on the sweep of his cheekbones, blue eyes dark and squeezed half-way shut in a desperate attempt to not lose eye contact, breath coming in pants and groans.

“Fuck, _Cas_.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, more with pleasure than anything else, but an instant later he feels Cas’s soft hand brushing over his cheek, in a gesture so tender that it makes Dean’s heart ache. “No, don’t hide from me, Dean… You don’t have to anymore… I see you just fine and I’m not going anywhere.”

Gasping, his eyes fly open to find Cas’s locked onto his face with an intensity that has Dean struggling to pull more air into his lungs. For the second time in as many years, Dean is actually looking at Cas as he fucks him. But this time it’s so much better because he can see everything in his boyfriend’s expression; the love, the adoration, the honesty.

There aren’t words in the dictionary to ever articulate how Dean feels at this particular moment in time. He can’t even think straight, let alone talk in actual sentences.

“’m close, Dean.” Cas mumbles, frantically pressing kisses to Dean’s lips, nails digging into the muscle of Dean’s shoulders, “gonna come.”

Dean drags out, rotates his hips and thrusts back in deep, burying himself in the tight clench, feeling Cas flex and tighten further around him before he’s struggling to control the heat behind his thrusts, feeling so utterly _gone_ that he’s not sure he can ever stop doing this, fucking Cas. He not entirely convinced that he ever wants to.

“Dean,”

Spine stiff and arched away from the wall, Castiel cries as he comes, hips frantically working against Dean’s, spurting between their bodies and Dean has a second to process the slick, sticky mess on his abdomen, before he’s there too, following Cas in his orgasm, thrusting in once, twice, guttural groan torn from his throat as he pulses inside his boyfriend, knees weak and threatening to give out.

He slumps forward, pressing their sweaty foreheads together, sharing air, focusing on getting his heart rate under control and his breathing to even out. It takes a good few minutes before they draw away from each other a little, but Cas is looking at him like he’s his entire world and damn if that feeling isn’t reciprocated.

“Holy shit, Detective Winchester.” Cas pants, flirting, teasing as his hand moves from Dean’s shoulder to squeeze Dean’s bicep, fluttering his eyelashes, and if _this_ is the Cas that he’s been missing out on all this time, then they’re going to have _so_ much fun. “You’re so strong. Do you work out?”

Dean huffs a laugh, steals a quick kiss. “No Mr. Novak, I’m a serial killer and I have to lift a lot of _dead_ weight.” It’s a line he’s said hundreds of times, to people who will never take it as anything other than a joke, but Cas’s eyes widen comically, and then he smiles, eyes sparking with mischief.

“Hmmm, have you ever thought about investing in some kind of a pulley system?”

 

***

 

An hour later sees them clean, clothed and slumped down on their couch, positively destroying a bucket of fried chicken, washing it down with Coke and there’s a tub of Ben and Jerry’s thawing on the coffee table with the scratch. It’s a form of rebellion against the world in the only way either of them can, and it’s fucking _awesome_.

Dean turns to face his boyfriend – the Vigilante – and he smirks when he’s greeted with Cas’s eyes already on him, appraising and contemplative.

“Me and you against the world, right Cas?”

Cas makes a noise of assent, painstakingly licking his fingers clean of fast food grease, sucking each digit into his mouth, no doubt enjoying Dean’s bitten-back groan, if his little private smirk is anything to go by. “The couple that slays together, stays together, right? I’m sure that’s what they teach kids in Sunday school these days.”

Dean leans in for a kiss, a quick, chaste – and slightly greasy, but as if he could give a fuck right now – press of lips that makes his heart skip a beat and he pulls away feeling content and _free_. It’s going to be hard, but so worth it. He’s going to make it his life’s mission to make it all work; he’ll do literally anything.

He can’t stop the sheer heart-bursting-happiness threatening to shake him apart, manifesting in the form of a ridiculously goofy smile, because Castiel Novak, with the domestic skills of Martha Stewart, saintly temperament and a boyfriend who works for the LAPD, is a serial killer.

Just like Dean.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there's another part to this story, which I've already got some stuff written for. It's called '...And An Angel Shall Lead Them'.  
> Should be up in a couple of days, and once again thank you guys :D.


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